The Future of Media Magazine and Forum

Posted June 27, 2008 at 11:07 am by Bob Guccione, Jr:

We will see media transform and metamorphose hundreds of times in our lifetime and yet never radically change. It is still and always going to be communication of information, some of it valuable, some of it dangerous, most of it meaningless, between people. The media, our vanities aside, is never the message. The message is the message.

Agree? Disagree? What’s Your Take On The Future of Media?

Posted on August 13, 2008 at 8:49 am by Madhavan:

The future is about 1) Priced content for high value stuff 2) Competition between advertisers to grab the best value 3) Efficiency of content creation and deployment across devices and media 4) Realisation that content is not just about quantity but the rate of usage and quality
http://mediascribbles.blogspot.com
Posted on August 12, 2008 at 9:57 pm by Steve Perlman:

In a world of ever-increasing noise and distraction, the challenge we face is to be accepted as more meaningful. It’s not easy to know what others think.
Posted on August 6, 2008 at 10:02 am by KC Collins:

I think that the increase in media fragmentation allows us all an even greater ability to reinforce our existing feelings and opinions rather than learn about new ones and open our minds. I think could have the ability to transform our cultural landscape and drive the fragmentation even further. I wonder how the future of media will evolve to overcome these ever reinforcing cliques to bring a level of objectivity back to the media, or if that’s even possible. As we are beginning to see a cyclical nature in the web [Is it really micro blogging or retro blogging? Are social networks the next Google and Yahoo or or Geocities and CompuServe?] and the digital divides become hubs, should we be re-reading Snow Crash for its ideas about consumer and demographically based communities… could that become an extension of our contuinued consumption of singularly focused media?
Posted on July 31, 2008 at 8:02 pm by Thomas Wilkinson:

Disagree. Media has been about money, power, and controlling the message to get more money, power, and control. It’s great to talk about the democratization of the web but with all media going digital and all information being tracked and automatically profiled as spiders relentlessly crawl the web it is scary to imagine the power that the information will give to whoever owns it. Privacy issues are going to be huge. Rather than a one way message broadcast to the masses and controlled by the few, digital media will allow two way messaging with one side collecting, indexing and profiling the target. And we think the consumer will be in control? The message is just a tool.
Posted on July 31, 2008 at 12:13 pm by Jon McInerney:

I agree and disagree. The irony of all of this is that as the communication seems to become more one-on-one, it essentially becomes more disingenuous and impersonal. Imagine having a one-on-one convo with 300 million people. It’s never going to happen except through mass computerized mechanical delivery. Personalization of the message has definitely become easier and the process of contact has sped up; but how different is this from when I used to sit at the Ping Pong table in our offices in Chelsea with a dozen other employees “personally” signing our director’s name to a mail-merged form letter inviting a carefully selected group of industry executives to attend our latest conference? Faster yes. More efficient yes. Different? How?

Posted on July 28, 2008 at 10:01 am by Mark Laskowski:

I disagree.

What is new about “new” media is that it actually allows “communication”. Previous media models did so only in the weakest, nearly inconsequential, ways.

Consider that communication is a loop with two entities that can interchange roles as sender and receiver (the receiver becomes the sender when responding to the receiver and so on, hence the loop).

When a person read The New York Times or watched a sitcom on ABC circa 1970 and before, that was not “communication of information”, that was delivery of information–more or less one way. There are plenty of other examples of that one-way delivery that exist to this day.

When I’m listening to Pandora at home or writing a post like this online, something different is taking place, something approaching bona fide communication. Certainly it’s a bit far fetched to think that Bob Guccione, Jr will read this post (new media makes creating the illusion of communication as easy as enabling authentic communication).

So as provocative as it may be to denounce a fractured version of Herbert Marshall McLuhan’s famous (and, I feel compelled to add, meaningful) phrase by asserting a tautology (that means what?), I would have to disagree with the initial statement and observe that it really states little of substance.

Some of us are rich and some of us are thoughtful.

Posted on July 8, 2008 at 11:00 am by Susan Kuchinskas:

“The world exists…in our minds. … Think not what you can do to get me to buy from you…think instead what you can do to reach my understanding of the world.”

“I think in the future everything will be more or less free, because it will be sponsored.”

Neuroscience has taken the first steps toward allowing us to literally change our minds by rewiring the circuits of neurons. As they map the brain, researchers use fMRI to see which parts are overactive or not active enough. There’s already software to train underdeveloped areas. Eventually, we’ll be able to use specially designed online games, digital video and direct electromagnetic stimulation of the brain via a Wii helmet to improve our minds and to have new kinds of neural experiences.

At first, these will only be available to the rich. As the technology becomes mainstream, advertisers will take this opportunity to deliver the “customer experience.” There will be branded and direct response versions. Campbell’s Alphabet Soup will sponsor an online game that improves kids’ reading ability. L’Oreal will offer one minute of direct stimulation of the brain’s pleasure center that also implants a thought about hair color every ten minutes.

Eventually, eBay will do brisk traffic in custom-designed thought patterns generated by consumers using free, web-based software offered by Yoogle. They won’t care that these thought patterns are constantly tracked and analyzed, because they know that this enables Yoogle to give them the advertising they really, really want.

Posted on July 8, 2008 at 10:59 am by Sean Murphy:

I think the future will be more 1-to-1 personalized communications done through advanced targeting. There is so much data out there now and there will be infinitely more in the not so distant future.

Posted on July 2, 2008 at 12:31 pm by Arthur House:

IPTV will be the medium that will provide all access to meet all of our viewing , music, and web needs. The service that integrates these in a format that is simple and fast will take over the entire media spectrum. Included in the soup of media will be the most creative advertising campaigns known to man.

Posted on July 1, 2008 at 12:31 pm by Shelley Ellis:

I see the immediate future in contextual targeting. With content targeting, we tap into the human language to form keyword groupings to reach our audience with text ads, gadget ads, video ads and display ads. With placement targeting we can use text ads, gadget ads, video ads and display ads to go right after the specific websites where we know our audience congregates.

Posted on June 30, 2008 at 3:56 pm by Yvonne DiVita:

There is no “message.” There is no “medium.” It’s all about interpretation and we each do that differently. The world exists…in our minds. Our minds are an invention of some long ago ancestor who wanted to communicate to his fellow man. It’s all only relevant if it’s relevant. Think not what you can do to get me to buy from you…think instead what you can do to reach my understanding of the world. And then, your relevance to it - and to me.

Posted on June 30, 2008 at 11:58 am by Chris Corkery:

Content delivery will split between a paid for or subsidized distribution depending on the targets choice, with technology facilitating more precise data capture, availability both in and out of home, dynamic interactivity and overall emotional connection.

The cost per impression will significantly rise on a whole but each impression thus becomes more valuable to the advertiser.

Technology will result in greater media efficiency.

Posted on June 27, 2008 at 3:33 pm by Jim Johnston:

I think Google will dominate the mobile/ media / internet world.

Posted on June 27, 2008 at 1:53 pm by Jesus Quintano:

People are always shooting the messenger though.

Posted on June 27, 2008 at 12:50 pm by Simon Wong:

If done right, the yahoo’s, the ebay’s and the gmail’s will be merged together with facebook in the middle of it all.
Eventually someone will emulate what the early stages of AOL did. Seems like Google’s off to a good start.

Posted on June 27, 2008 at 11:49 am by Colleen Adams:

I think in the future everything will be more or less free, because it will be sponsored.
I expect that soon cellphones will be completely branded and always display an ad before you can make a call, but it will be free phone with free service.

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Agree? Disagree? What's Your Take On The Future of Media?