• by The Editor , June 4, 2008

Bob Guccione Jr, former editor and publisher of Spin, Gear, and Discover magazines, will guest edit the September, special double issue of MediaPost's MEDIA magazine, which will kick off Advertising Week in New York in September.

The special edition will explore the possibilities, problems and shape of media in the near and distant future. It will feature articles, essays and interviews by and with some of the most powerful, accomplished and imaginative figures in the world of content, advertising, technology and the communications industry, including scientists and futurists, and will be global in coverage.

Some of the smartest people on the planet will debate and project how they believe media is going to evolve and how it will be consumed. Besides exploring each category specifically, the issue will evaluate, as best we can, the future of resources (paper, oil, airwaves, time, money and imagination), of journalism, technology (will future delivery methods be biological), of the image (how do we verify what we see when the artificial can seamlessly replace the actual?), what will robots read (they will read), and why the Internet won't consume print.

Related features include the future of media in India, Africa, Europe and China, a look inside the M.I.T Media Lab, how the ultimate search engine works and how marketers will attempt to hijack it (hint: its also the oldest search engine, and you're using it right now), life in a town with no media, and a neuroscientist on why probably the most exciting and unpredictable vocation of all, working in media, is so sodden with fear.

"We will see media transform and metamorphose hundreds of times in our lifetime and yet never radically change," says Guccione. "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."

On September 22nd, the magazine edition will come to life during MediaPost's Future of Media Forum, which will open Advertising Week. A cross-industry panel will debate the ideas and discoveries from the pages of the magazine with a keynote address and an interactive round table discussion.

Guccione is bullish about what lays ahead: "Media professionals shouldn't fear the future, they should be more excited than ever: All the rules are subject to change or being thrown out altogether. Creativity has a new, almost infinite sandbox to play in."