The Wall Street/High Tech Disconnect - Or is it?

This year's coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has made one thing clear: people, or the media, at least, have gotten blown away and disgusted by its sheer scale. What can you possibly glean from the football fields of booths and swarms of visitors at a show that has now come to reflect the noisiness and confusion of the Internet? I agree, it is hard to figure out what is of value in such a crowded landscape, but it is no different than the signal/noise problem that pervades both online and off-line media today. But when people, particularly those in the media, start to make general statements of the effect "CES Doesn't Matter," they are missing the point. The point isn't that CES itself sucks; because one could analogize that the same problem that plagued CES 2008 is the same problem that plagues Media 2008, and therefore that all media sucks. I don't really believe that (most of the time). But what I do believe is that skills and tools are necessary to help people navigate a cluttered landscape, be it at CES or when searching for interesting and relevant stories in both new and old media. But the media just doesn't seem to get this.

Take yesterday's story on Valleywag that used Robert Scoble's interview on Dylan Ratigan's Fast Money segment to crap all over CES (and Scoble, for that matter):

Blogger Robert Scoble made an appearance on CNBC's Fast Money, but it was a disaster. The stock-talk jocks were thoroughly unimpressed. Thinner screens? Products due out in 2009? Build-your-own cell-phones from Bug Labs? They were having exactly none of it. Here's the grand disconnect between the gadget-addled technofreaks of Silicon Valley and the portfolio-juggling quant jocks of Wall Street: You want to make money five years from now. They want to make money today. Never forget that, whether you're talking to a business-channel anchor or an investment banker.

With all due respect to a high quality pub like Valleywag, if they think this is the key take-away from the interview they are completely high. Or simply not that smart. Ok, so maybe Scoble could use some media training. No, he definitely could use some media training. But he's a smart guy who pointed out some important megatrends that are relevant for investors. Just because the brilliant thinkers and commentators on Fast Money thought that Scoble was a boob and his gadget-heavy, forward-looking comments a joke, it doesn't mean that they are right. In fact, I am here to tell you that they are just dead wrong. Products due in 2009? Yeah, that might have some impact on my financial projections and could possibly effect my assessment of a company's stock price. The modular nature of Bug Labs' platform; might that not be a megatrend, greater customization and flexibility, that is worth thinking about? If people want to make money today, then thinking about a company and an industry's dynamics tomorrow is pretty important. It kind of has an effect on that tried-and-true tool of financial analysts, discounted cash flow analysis. And probability trees. And ripple effects within and across industries. This is pretty elemental stuff, and most of Scoble's comments could have been contextualized in this way. But neither the crack Fast Money team saw it that way, nor their fellow intellectual heavyweights at Valleywag. Too bad.

I guess my key take-away isn't that there is a disconnect between Wall Street and High Technology/Uber geeks like Scoble, but that there is a disconnect between Wall Street and those ADD-fueled Fast Money/Valleywag media-types. Let's be clear here, folks. Fast Money is not Wall Street. Fast Money is entertainment. Just like Valleywag. Real Wall Street (and hedge funds, too) are listening to people like Scoble who might help identify megatrends and products that impact the companies they cover, possible new entrants that could disrupt established players, etc. Good investors can separate the valuable nuggets of information from the noise. Good consumers of media can do the same thing, too.