Seybold: The Look of Publishing 20 Years Out

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Leading off the Seybold Keynote session "Publishing: The 20-Year View," AnchorDesk editorial director Jesse Berst set the mood by quoting Yogi Berra: "You got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there." Admirably, the visionary view this morning comprised thoughtful speculation and analysis more than outright guesses.

Featuring John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe Systems; John Gage, chief researcher at Sun Microsystems; John Seely, director of Xerox PARC; and Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future, the conference attempted to tackle the world of 2020 on six key points: future devices, future types of interface, what kind of content will be seen, the tools used to produce this content, the state of future copyrighting, and the filters that will be used to handle the rush of information.

John Gage emphasized the changing of media-reading devices. Using the example of the newspaper, he illustrated how it has evolved to handle mass amounts of media information. Gage has little praise for the current spate of e-book readers but much hope in their potential. He predicted that display surfaces of the future will be interactive — that users processing future media will be in an immersive environment, not a solitary one. This type of interaction may be more social, but Gage cautioned that this kind of instant access might lead to a loss of cultural memory. In his own words, "The power of permanence is crippling." Our ancestors could memorize hours of oral history, but if information is always available, the need for us to do so may be lost in twenty years.

John Warnock disagreed with this idea in his speech on the future type of interface, stating, "modality is permanent." Using the example of radio and TV existing side-by-side without one killing the other, he envisions a world in which there will be an accumulation of modality. Some types may be more popular, but they would not necessarily cancel out others. Both John Seely and Paul Saffo predicted that computing will become more and more virtual and interactive, with the wall between the user’s world and the cyber-world eventually dissolving entirely.

John Seely’s speech on future types of content largely concerned Xerox’s PARC center and the attempts there to create new ways to interpret media. He rolled a TV clip outlining sonic books (books with embedded sound to complement stories) and surfing tables (tables allowing readers to scan over a large copy of a document). But these media types are useless without provocative content. "[Media] has to be interactive," Seely said, "or we will be killed with information." Further discussion focused on the types of future content, and whether "mindless" entertainment would triumph over interaction-intensive content. Paul Saffo reaffirmed his opinion that old media would not disappear, using an example of cars overshadowing horses.

Saffo’s speech on copyrights was easily the most strident, centering largely on the Napster case and it’s martyring effect. "Napster is not an aberration," he stated. "Napster is the first of many." He saw the Napster "piracy" as a natural phase of technology growth; one side endlessly one-upping the other does not kill technology evolution, it actually helps it, given that new innovations are always added to old paradigms. John Gage echoed the sentiments, paraphrasing Peter Gabriel’s response to a reporter’s wondering about fans recording his material. "I see anyone who records my tapes as a part of my advertising."

As time wore short, there was little time to tackle the question of filtering all of the information that will be available in twenty years. John Seely envisioned intelligent filters, but also a reliance on socializing. John Warnock viewed editors and editorial sites to be the key, citing the popularity of web logs as an example. Paul Saffo didn’t have any specifics to add but commented on the endless race between new filtering instruments and new information.

Few concrete predictions to come out of this conference, but far-out, gee-whiz prophecies weren’t really the point. Perhaps the point was more to acknowledge what we don’t know about publishing 20 years from now than what we do. And maybe the reason most of the panelists were vague is that none of us can accurately predict what will be invented in ten years, much less twenty.

Luke Farrell is a production assistant for creativepro.com.

  • anonymous says:

    than wonder about things they can’t possibly know. To be so lucky. Why don’t Warnock, et al, just go hit the links?

    I agree with you, Farrell, but I’ll take it one step further on the cynicism matrix: this is just smoke-and-mirrors to get media coverage.

    BTW: what the hell does “modality” mean in this context?

  • anonymous says:

    I think that people don’t realize how fast things will change once the technology is in place. We are almost there with the technology. We still have to make sure the creators of the content can retain and enforce their copyrights so they will be comfortable allowing original works to be presented digitally. After that, some advertising or maybe a TV show featuring the latest innovations in eContent delivery will generate consumer awareness. That will create the eager demand which finally drives the prices low enough to make wearable computers, reading devices, electronic ink, and display surfaces affordable for the average consumer.

    Linda Gruber
    https://www.novelart.com

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