"We don't have anywhere near the backbone bandwidth we need in this country," says veteran analyst Stuart Zipper, senior editor of Broadband Business Report. "In two to three years, we will see some kind of crunch."

Roland DeSilva has spent 25 years working where media and money intersect. And so he has reason to feel confident about where they're headed. "The perfect platform for the foreseeable future will combine print, online and face-to-face," says the cofounder of New York investment bank DeSilva+Phillips LLC. "Over time, though, these will all morph into the media brand. By then it won't matter if the technical medium for any one aspect of the brand's representation is print, online or a hologram."

In February 2008, The New York Times ran a piece called "Pushing Paper Out the Door" with a graphic depicting a contemporary pulp-free living space that would liberate residents from clutter: "The Paperless Home." It looked pretty slick, boasting digital picture frames, e-books, flatscreen televisions and smartreaders on kitchen appliances. Though maybe, if you'll pardon the expression, good on paper, the image felt reminiscent of a wireless future promised in technology rags 10 years ago that has and hasn't come to pass.

All of us are fascinated by the future. After all, we'll spend the rest of our careers and lives there. Allowing for the uncertainty imagining tomorrow brings, there are some key factors that will help us thrive as marketing and media practioners in the future. Success will be aligned with how well we create products and services that resonate with what people need and desire at a fundamental human level. Our research at Denuo indicates that media and marketing companies need to provide three things to remain relevant and successful: access, participation and empowerment.

1. The first continuously published American newspaper was the Boston News-Letter, first published April 24, 1704. It reported such groundbreaking stories as the death of the famed pirate Blackbeard in a sensational on-deck fight. In 1761, the paper advertised a "Scheme for a Lottery" to sell 6,000 tickets at $2 each to raise funds for a new highway.

It should come as no surprise that media developed for the Web and mobile devices are dominant in China, which claims the world's largest Internet market, at 220 million users, and the largest number of mobile phone users: 500 million plus. Two of China's Web sites are regularly ranked by Alexa within the Top 20 sites globally - search engine Baidu and Tencent's instant messaging site QQ.com.

The story of copyright in this country has primarily been one of expansion. Given the value of content, it is no surprise that copyright has expanded not just substantively, but also temporally. Currently, works do not enter the public domain until 70 years after the death of the author. If you're 20 today and write a screenplay, and you survive global warming and the subprime crisis and the religious right and live to be 80, the rights in your work continue into the year 2138.

When I was a girl, I counted everything. I knew how old I was, I was proud of my grades and later my SAT scores, and I tried to keep careful track of my meager amount of money. As I got older, I grew out of those habits and lived free. But now I see it all coming back, from people who measure their blood sugar several times a day (often for good reason) or count their steps, to people who count their money and count their friends. How much is enough? While money is fungible, friends are …

Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil once said, "Our computers aren't going to be these distinct rectangular devices we carry around. We are going to merge with them." Computers and cell phones will be made from human cells instead of silicon. Researchers are trying to make electronics resemble biological systems more closely so they can adapt, self-design, self-assemble and self-repair.

If you're going to talk to anyone about the future - and what, exactly, robots will be doing - then who better to ask than Bender, the hard-drinking, womanizing, gambling-addicted robot on Comedy Central's Futurama? Luckily, Joe Mandese was able to sit down with the abusive android to get the lowdown on media circa 2999.