Earlier this month, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. As you probably saw all over the net and on TV, it was a huge event that has shook its once-upon-a-time stigma of being just a gathering of nerds. Stand up, we're cool now!

Companies showed off their upcoming drops spanning products from 3D televisions to touchscreen everything. One of the most shocking sights however was the lack of Hip-Hop's presence at the convention.

Sure Diddy and Dr. Dre were there to push their signature line of Monster made headphones but why is it that the Hip-Hop community is only brought into the tech equation when it's time to market products? That same community is arguably one of the largest groups that uses technology and makes it cool. Except for a few DJs at a some of the booths, there were hardly any folks representing the crowd that puts these products in videos, makes songs about them and races to be the first with the latest.0 version of the hottest device. Sadly, some of the company reps I met with didn't even know who Run DMC were! For real!

Hip-Hop's contribution to technology goes further back than Zshare and Megaupload. Remember those two-way pagers? Yup, I'm talking about the fat, silver Motorola P-935 joints that everyone had. Not only were these a wildly popular communication device in Hip-Hop but also a style accessory. Plain white tees with the front corner tucked into the holster…Classic! It was also the Hip-Hop community that started blinging them out with rhinestones before Hollywood. Super producer Just Blaze was one of the first to re-create popular songs into ringtones using the vibration function as bass.

Even on a gaming level, the most successful Hip-Hop related games were the Def Jam fighters and what else, GTA: San Andreas? Mark Ecko's Getting Up game was cool but throwing up graff pieces all day was not for everybody (at least not for me, I'd rather just look at good work). Parappa The Rapper doesn't count even though it was a fun game. Ha! There's so much to experience in Hip-Hop culture both creatively and technically, it's a shame that such a diverse community isn't represented in another that's just as diverse in concept. In order to bridge that gap, the tech game needs more folks from the Hip-Hop generation. Could you imagine a dance game overseen by the Jabbawokeez? I'm getting exhausted just thinking about it.

Not trying to stroke our own mics but that's one of the things that makes Def Jam Rapstar such an important creation. It's not just about spitting rhymes into a mic, it's an experience of being an emcee. You'll see what I mean soon enough.

These days we have producers using all types of hardware and software to make music and your favorite rappers writing their rhymes on Blackberrys. I'd love to hear one day that one of Eminem's homies helped in the creation of the hot new media player or that Young Money just signed a software developer. It's not like Hip-Hop isn't comfortable with or afraid of tech, we just need to not let Dr. Dre be the only face in the game. He's got enough to do.