The most immediate of this issue’s “Road Signs” is the observation or warning by David Carr’s media column in the NY Times: Risks Abound as Reporters Play in Traffic. He says, “Journalists who were paid to write when the muse or events beckoned, are now held accountable for the amount of work they produce and the volume of traffic it attracts …The availability of ready metrics on content is not only changing the way news organizations compensate their employees, but will have a significant effect on the news itself.” He illustrates this point with several examples and possibilities that are worth reading.
Typical traffic generator….
Email Insider’s David Baker predicts that by 2017, email will be used to send instructions or actually activate 3D printers to produce products. Replacement parts for cars are expected to be among them, if not in three years, soon. Other developments Baker predicts: virtual currencies will be accepted, putting buy, sell or trade at our fingertips; the ability to tie marketing to scents, providing “a real emotive connection,” a single screen that can be projected on any surface, car, bathroom wall, eyewear, as well as TV, Ipad or smartphone. He concludes his prognostications with a quote attributed to Albert Einstein, “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”
Yet another forecast comes from Joe Espelien, a senior advisor at The Diffusion Group (TDG). As reported by P.J. Bednarski in VidBlog, a TDG survey of video viewing indicates that by 2020 legacy TV viewing will be down 25%. That is not a startling trend, Bednarski notes, citing the 1990 ratings leader was “Cheers” at 21.3 while the 2013 leader was Sunday Night Football with an 8.3 rating. He says, “Espelien’s new Big 4 are Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, which aren’t very new at all as powerful Web forces, but (with the exception of Apple) are much newer as content players.” Espelien says, about his new Big 4, according to Bednarski, “each one is ‘building global ecosystems to support quantum video viewing – the multi-screen, multi-context, highly-personalized video viewing experiences.’ In short, they’re where the money is. Or will be.”
Or, in a few more years into the next decade, we may well be where the Internet takes us. A joint study by the Pew Research Center and Elton University’s Imaging the Internet Center, titled Digital Life in 2025, reveals persons recognized as Internet experts believe the Internet, “will become ‘like electricity’ – less visible, yet more deeply embedded in people’s lives for good and ill.” Some of the developments seen by the experts are hardly unexpected, others seem idealistic and a few suggest serious concerns such as humans losing primacy to devices. For a quick summary go to: The Center for Media Research’s report: Research Brief: The Gurus Speak: The Internet Impact in 10 Years. Or see the full report at Pew Internet.