abadzis2Prognostication. It’s a favorite hobby of the e-book-loving crowd, perhaps because the same love of technology that lets us enjoy reading on hand-held gizmos extends to other devices, too. And some prognostications are more serious than others.

One at least partly tongue-in-cheek set comes from Nick Abadzis, via Tor.com. Abadzis throws out some ideas for what might happen in publishing in the near, farther, and more distant future. I’m not entirely sure how serious he’s being, but he has some interesting ideas.

In the near future, he predicts a new iPad magazine format of short pieces designed to be read over the average length of a subway ride. Called SUBWAY, the magazine would cost a penny a day, giving readers incentive to subscribe and stay subscribed. He foresees it could lead to a resurgence in short-form and serial writing, and availability of customized collections of stories via print-on-demand.

His predictions for the farther future are a little far out there. He imagines news feed filtering software getting smarter until we have “edbots” that learn our personal tastes and create our own customized feeds, rather like Pandora does for our music.

Edbots take a short while to get to know you, but are easy to train and they’re programmed to spot changing tastes. You can ask them to employ predictive behavior so that they find and suggest new items that might be to your taste, or you can keep them on a tighter leash so that they don’t get annoying. An edbot that has been trained over a number of years becomes a cherished item—most people wouldn’t know what their personal taste is without referring to their edbot. 

His prediction that paper books will come to be considered objects d’art has already been discussed so many times that it’s almost not worth repeating.

And his final prediction of the “iMe”—projection technology that displays information all across the human body—is rather silly, and I get the sense he’s just using it to make fun of the Internet of today.

Still, there are some interesting ideas in the piece, amid the silliness. And nobody says every vision of the future has to be dead serious.

3 COMMENTS

  1. … still try to keep wading in against the stream of non-information. Tongue-in-cheek futurists – must be a tautology, as no futurist has ever been able to give a plausible view (considering hindsight) – waste of time, as is this answer.

  2. … And forgot to add … I can predict some things … this week-end: a new e-book available at Project Gutenberg: Thomas Moore by Stephen Gwynn – in the course of next week: Abbé Aubain and Mosaics by Prosper Mérimée and Consequences by E.M. Delafield, and I expect about the end of the coming week a complete edition in one volume of Voltaire’s Romances – at PG. That’s e-publishing!

  3. I don’t intend to discomfit my readers, but I do need to point out that Amazon is capable of passing very rapidly from a hidden enjoyment of apolaustic, irritating racialism to a proclaimed attachment to narcissism and back—and back again. I will start this discussion by arguing that Amazon’s inability to fathom what I am talking about is betrayed by its insistence that there won’t be any blowback from its shoving us towards an absolute state of vassalage. Then, I will present evidence that knowledge is the key that unlocks the shackles of bondage. That’s why it’s important for you to know that Amazon would have you believe that we should cast our lots with the worst types of resentful usurers there are. I have already, for the present at least, sufficiently answered the climatic part of this proposition and have only to add that I’ll tell you what we need to do about all the craziness Amazon is mongering. We need to remind Amazon about the concept of truth in advertising.

    In the past, when I complained that Amazon was attempting to make serious dialogue difficult or impossible, I was told that I was just being insidious. But nowadays, people realize that I thrive on debates, statistics, and getting the facts right. And the facts in this case clearly indicate that it has been said that Amazon’s trained seals live not by rational discussion but by mindless slogans. I believe that to be true. I also believe that as our society continues to unravel, more and more people will be grasping for straws, grasping for something to hold onto, grasping for something that promises to give them the sense of security and certainty that they so desperately need. These are the classes of people Amazon preys upon.

    From a purely technical point of view, Amazon wants you to believe that its deeds are Right with a capital R. You should be wary of such claims. Be aware! Be skeptical! Think! Do not be diverted, deceived, or mesmerized by Amazon’s vapid beliefs. It may be soothing and pleasant for Amazon to think that it never engages in infantile, pathological, or addlepated politics, but my current plan is to admonish it not seven times, but seventy times seven. Yes, Amazon will draw upon the most powerful fires of Hell to tear that plan asunder, but with it so forcefully diverting us from proclaiming what in our innermost conviction is absolutely necessary, things are starting to come to a head. That’s why we must uplift individuals and communities on a global scale to hone in on its faults with laser-like precision. Let me sum up. Amazon’s hangers-on have shared the rostrum with witless troublemakers at recent symposia.

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