Steve Shannon
The Internet turned 40 years old, last week, on September 2nd. As an armchair futurist, here’s what I see lying ahead for us in the years to come.
When the Internet turns 60 in 2029:
1. The landline telephone goes the way of the dodo. All phone calls are routed via the Internet. Everybody gets one phone number, for life, for all purposes. It replaces your social security number as the main means of identification.
2. Mobile phones truly become mobile computers. You make your all your business and personal calls, both voice and video, from this one device. You consume most of your media from it as well. The device links to all your files and applications. When you are in a fixed location, such as office, home, or hotel room, you dock your phone – much like you do today with a laptop – permitting use of a larger screen, headset, and handset. (Keyboards are mostly irrelevant as speech to text technology types documents as fast as you can speak.)
3. Almost everybody consumes their news via video. Television and the web merge, eliminating the line between broadcast and web video.
4. Cable companies become exactly that, just a delivery channel for the Internet. The same holds true for cellular phone providers as they shift to providing wireless Internet access.
5. All quality entertainment and sports media is purchased directly from the producers of that media. Media cartels form along the lines of ABC-Disney-ESPN, as one example, to serve a single consumer across a spectrum of programming and content (news-entertainment-sports). News and journalism exists within these entities but it is soft. Media relations still continues to thrive in this realm, providing reporters and editors with story ideas and content.
6. Hard journalism exists, but its audience is small and devoted. Funding for this is very much along the lines of how PBS currently operates, including the use of taxpayer dollars and augmented by advertising. Topics are limited to government and social issues as the media cartels cover everything else. (See previous bullet.)
7. Citizen journalism exists a la Wikipedia, but has narrow audiences, restricted by geography or topic. Public relations has a role here too, with companies being participants in these types of online communities.
8. All media programming and content is on-demand. You can pay for how many commercials you don’t or do want to see, trading money and/or highly detailed information about yourself for programming and commercials. The ads you do see are targeted specifically to you.
9. There’s plenty of free media available as well, a lot of it provided by consumer goods companies who have something to sell. The soap opera of the 1950s are truly reborn a century later. Companies with common audiences link together to form free media cartels, similar to those created by entertainment and sports media.
10. Last, signage, and vibrant ever-changing electronic signage at that, takes over the physical landscape as an inescapable way to deliver mass advertising and branding.
Does this all sound a little too far fetched? If you find yourself saying that, do some research and see what day-to-day life was like in 1969, and all the advances in personal technology that have occurred since then. Still doubtful? Then go back another 40 years to 1929, or another 40 to 1889. One thing is for sure, the only constant is change.
How do you see media, the Internet, and technology changing in 2049? Share your thoughts with the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
