Book Expo America is the large annual convention of the book publishing industry.  For the past few days, thousands of people descended on the Javits Center in New York for the annual ritualistic gathering of the tribes of this 500 year old business.  As regular readers know, this year I have attended the Consumer Electronic Show, the NATPE television convention and the Chicago Auto Show.  Once again I found myself navigating an annual convention of a business that targets the consumer [BEA is primarily for the ‘trade’ or consumer part of the book publishing industry].  I look to see what the industry trends are, and how the business is reflecting and adapting to the radical changes going on in society today. Finally, as a futurist, I look at the business through my own filter of what I see the future to be to gauge whether the business is doing what might be necessary to expand and thrive in this new age we live in. 

The book business is a mature business, which would be expected since Gutenberg initiated it more than 550 years ago.  It is certainly not a growth business.  I attended a Trends 2007 presentation which provided a detailed snapshot of the industry today.  Year to year revenue growth, current and projected out to 2011, is in the 2-3.5% range, but year to year unit sales over all is less than 0.5%.  In other words, any growth is due to increased prices.  Factoring in population growth, …

Last week it was announced that Life magazine would cease publication, again. This is the third death of the magazine since it was founded in 1936. Life was a weekly from 1936 to 1972, when it first stopped publication. It was revived as a monthly in 1978 but then shut down again in 2000. It was resurrected as a newspaper insert in 2004 but never really took hold in that iteration which was an incredibly misguided strategy to begin with.

Life was, simply put, the greatest showcase of quality and historically important photographs in the middle part of the 20th century in America. Many of the greatest photographers in the country dreamed of being a Life photographer, and in fact became great because, in part their photographs appeared in the magazine. I remember as a young boy the thrill of coming home from school on the day that Life magazine was delivered by the mail man. It was a thrill to sit down and spend an hour looking at every photograph and reading every caption. At a time when there were only 5 TV stations coming into the home and newscasts were 15 minutes with no video, Life magazine was truly the window to the world. Why write about this in a place with a tag line “A Future Look at Today”? Well the story of Life magazine is a story about the last 75 years of media and also a story …

This week at the Consumer Electronics Show there are hundreds of companies touting new gadgets that are “revolutionary” “innovative” “at the cutting edge” and “totally cool”.  I will leave the descriptions of all these to the mainstream media as they already excessively cover this convention.  Instead I will give you some view on the larger trends that are clear.

Connectivity

We are rapidly moving to total connectedness. Whether you are in the office, in the home, on the road, or anywhere in the world you can be connected to information, data and billions of people.    Bill Gates spoke of the fact that the home is soon going to be completely connected.  Computers, televisions, phones, everything in the home will be connected.  Ed Zander, Chairman of Motorola spoke about the home as being a hub of “seamless technology” and that mobile devices provide “seamless mobility” wherever we are in the world.  Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia speaks of “a world where everyone can be connected” and of “mobility, interconnectivity, community and convenience” 

Compare how much more connected you are now than you were 10 years ago. That is how much more you will be connected in 3-5 years than you are today.  How we use that connectivity is up to us and is the human variable in the equation.  Technology is providing us with connectivity that twenty years ago was only imagined in science fiction and in the minds of a few visionary futurists.

Availability

We are moving toward a world where practically every type of …

One of the trade offs we seem to have accepted during the past 20 years is a loss of privacy.  None of us say we approve of that, but we have embraced technology in such a way that a diminished sense of privacy has occurred.  The portability of storage and computing, as discussed on this blog in earlier posts, is a major reason.  The easier small storage devices and laptops are to carry, the higher probability of theft.
It was revealed the other day that a laptop, with personnel records for 382,000 Boeing employees was stolen.  This was the third time in 13 months that this has occurred with Boeing.  Of course Boeing is not the only company where this has happened.  Laptops are portable and easy to put into a briefcase or bag.  Someone goes up for another cup of coffee at Starbucks or leaves their desk to go to the bathroom and in a few seconds the laptop and all the data on it is stolen.  We all enjoy the fact that we can have a computer with us wherever we are.  The freedom to work wherever and whenever we want is a very empowering thing, something that didn’t exist 20 years ago.

In the 1960s and 1970s, computing equaled mainframe computing.  Companies and universities all had these large machines that were in air conditioned, controlled access environments.  Access was highly monitored, records were kept for all activities and people even dressed in white …