• by Nina Lentini , Staff Writer, October 12, 2007

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer predicts that in 10 years everything you read you will read on a screen. But before notions of laptops in bathrooms take hold, he crumples a piece of paper and suggests the screen will be that flexible, that malleable. You want to argue with him, he says, and say it's more likely to be 12 years away? Fine, he says, then 12.

"You say, 'My parents will never get there?'," Ballmer asks, rhetorically. "You're right. But your kids will get there in four years." It's very important that as soon as you assume that everything will be delivered digitally, all media, all advertising will have to take that into account.

As for what Ballmer calls "personal authoring," none of it will be separate from the consumption of produced media. All media will have interactivity, community. There will be so many new sources of media. The blogger of today, he predicts, will be, in a sense, just a footnote five to 10 years from now.

Gulp.