The question I am asked the most is: "Are we ever going to get sick of celebrities?" Then, "Have we already?" Of course, the very next question is usually along the lines of, "Is it true that Madonna and Guy are getting divorced?" or "Did Brad and Angelina really get $15 million for the photos of their twins?"

"Africans are the least-served people in the world in terms of the circulation of information. This continent exhibits a mass media that is everywhere limited in terms of quantity and also, sometimes, quality," says Professor Guy Berger, who heads the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University in South Africa. He sees this as a major handicap to the evolution of an information society.

Okay, right. The future of media. Got it. We're gonna put on our special 4-D glasses and merrily skip around the space-time continuum, and report what we see, and what we see is expected to be unexpected. Here's an idea: Why don't I go to The Media Lab at MIT, where lots of extremely bright people are working on projects that look like the cover of Wired magazine in 20 years, and let you guys know what's happening.

What development, trend or innovation is likely to have a transformational effect on how we consume media in the near future? Broadband and the Internet are already having a transformative effect on how we consume media, and I expect that is going to continue to grow over the next few years. Today, you can view programming over the Internet in ways unimaginable just a few years ago. TV receivers are now being introduced that will allow you to view programming delivered over the Internet. Over time, the lines between the various delivery options will continue to blur.

Last February, comedian Sarah Silverman appeared on her then-boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel's ABC late-night program, surprising him with an outrageously funny short film: "I'm F---ing Matt Damon." Sung to a tune on Silverman's guitar, even Damon - the good-natured Good Will Hunting star and People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" in 2007 - danced and sang the chorus ("on the bed, on the floor, on a towel by the door, in the tub, in the car, up against the mini-bar"). It was an instant hit.

Eventually, technology for electronic paper displays will improve, and the clunky book reader will become a flexible computer that looks like a single sheet of paper. It'll be flexible enough to drop down the stairs and sturdy enough to take to the beach. While most displays currently use backlight to produce images and words, which can strain your eyes, electronic paper uses reflected light, which will feel, to your eyes, just like reading this page.

To celebrate its 75th anniversary, Esquire became the first magazine to publish an electronic cover. Its October issue features words and images scrolling across the page, using electronic ink, with a battery life of 90 days. "Magazines have basically looked the same for 150 years," says editor-in-chief David Granger, who hopes the issue will end up in the Smithsonian (though it might be more at home in Times Square).

When I was asked to write about the future of radio, I felt I was being asked to step into, chronicle, and pay homage to a house I once lived in that has been renovated beyond recognition. Rather than give voice to the rising tides, the glorious future, the spectacular new delivery systems and the consolidation of mono-media into media stations, since it's my turn to speak, I am going to tell you first what radio was. All the futurists, modernists and media developers can wait. It's their world and their future. But a writer is permitted to go into …

Stepping out of the under-renovation airport in the Indian capital New Delhi on the Fourth of July, it was impossible to miss a giant billboard announcing the launch of People magazine. A U.S. title launched in India on American Independence Day with a striking Indian flavor: Is a phase of reverse cultural colonialism under way?

In the summer of 1995, during the height of early Internet media hype, my stepfather, Paul Bernick, asked me what all the fuss was about. To illustrate the potential magnitude of the new medium, and to do it in a way that might register at a very personal level, I told him that using technologies that existed at that very moment, I could "instantly beam you from New York to Hong Kong" via the Internet. The Star Trek-like analogy had come to me in a flash, and the truth is it startled me as much as it startled him. But …