Future of the Media

By 2012 all print media will be forced to radically adapt towards an online multimedia model. Newspapers are already in turmoil as they switch to a primarily online model with advertising revenues collapsing as traditional revenue streams dry up and loss of classified and banner advertising unable to be compensated by online revenues. Already mass layoffs of journalists and support staff are in train- 12,000 this year alone, as page layouts and editorial are contracted out.

Traditional news media, both local and global, is rapidly being reduced to a stream of headlines with minimal analysis. Special editions and feature articles will continue in reduced quantity, but online short-burst information- text, video and audio streams will be increasingly popular, distributed via multimedia platforms such as new generation smart phones, already in common use.

By 2020- traditional free to air television channels will have largely disappeared, along with many cable channels, with television advertising similarly caught in the headlight glare of change. The switch will be to web channels covering every topic- personalised to individual taste- viewable anywhere, anytime and watched primarily on mobile media screens. The personalised channel will be ubiquitous- news and information will be filtered and customised to every personal taste.

All print media including magazines and books will have followed newspapers to a multimedia model distributed over the web, using almost exclusively eBook readers such as Amazon's Kindle, iPads and smart phones for flexible viewing. Terabyte flash memory will be used for offline personal media storage- but will be largely redundant due to the availability of virtually unlimited online storage cloud/utility sites run by Google, Amazon, Microsoft etc.

Most print and video media will be available via direct ultrafast wave division multiplex wireless downloads. Bookstores, despite the use of print on demand xerox machines as a short term stop-gap will also convert exclusively to downloads and be forced to compete for business with coffee houses and other social/cultural hubs offering direct media experiences. These will morph into the dominant local community knowledge and workplace centres of the future.

In addition, the trend towards alternate realities will continue, with entertainment media such as virtual worlds combining with social gaming to bcome a dominant form. News and sport will also become interactive, overlapping with gaming and increasingly available within 3D holographic spaces for maximum immersive effect.

The media will focus on a number of differentiated streams available from thousands of web hubs, aggregation sites and social networks in three broad forms. First- news headlines and short synopses of current events as currently available online, competing with traditional news feeds and wire services. Second- indepth reviews and features relating to past events and narratives, merging with traditional book and blog formats. And third- future scenario analyses and forecasts tied to current trends. These scenarios will also feed back into current events creating news.

In addition the number of individual and small group freelance mulltimedia blogs and wikis, distributed via syndicated web sites, webcasts, social networks, media feeds and aggregation sites, will have grown exponentially- to at least triple current levels- exploring every aspect of societal experience.

By 2030- free to air networks, except for a small proportion of public, special demographic and dedicated sponsored channels will have disappeared, eliminated by reduced advertising revenue and the ready availability of unlimited web on-demand material.

Specialised channnels covering realtime activities, such as major sporting events, will survive, but increasingly these will be produced by freelance groups and directly brokered to consumer groups for distribution on social networks for example.
Film amd video makers will be largely independent individuals and groups working on particular projects within virtual fluid teams- marketing their services directly to consumer groups or market brokers.

All news including generic geopolitical, weather, economic, financial, environmental and technology coverage, will be handled automatically as 24 hr feeds, operating without human intervention. Analysis will be available as a product of specialist freelance individuals and groups, not permanently connected to any particular media organisation.

The web behemoths such as Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook will have become the largest media as well as advertising players. However a reverse trend will have begun, with citizen journalism playing a major role together with greater acceptance of the Global Commons model- a free sharing marketplace of material and knowledge accessible for the global benefit. This will make inhouse news gathering and reporting functions largely redundant. In addition, traditional advertising will have become increasingly irrelevant as markets fragment and consumers begin to take control, dictating their own information indepth requirements on a need-to-know basis. Low key informational advertising embedded within social media and available on a request basis will become the dominant form.

Alternate knowledge and social hubs such as the thousands of Wikipedia lookalikes, controlled by consumer groups, will start to compete with and displace the power of the media and ultra web enterprises such as Google, which will be forced to cede part of its global knowledge control in its own survival self-interest. The Web will be controlled by all nations via the global commons in conjunction with a specially constituted body such as the present ICAAN, devolving away from US control.

By 2040- news analysis, as well as its gathering and distribution, will be largely automated and fluid- available independently on demand and on a push feedback basis- tailored to all netcitizens and ever-changing special interest groups, operating in diverse virtual social realities.

Traditional advertising as we know it will have largely disappeared. Product and service information will be available instead via reliable consumer assessment feedback networks based on the semantic and intelligent web assessment (ref Future Web blog) and assisted by a small number of specialised human information researchers - continuously updated, with factual information available on demand or pushed to meet personal preferences.

Advertising will have morphed to provide consumer virtual experiences on an entertainment and support knowledge basis. At the same time future trend analysis and scenario creation will become increasingly significant and the largest media growth segment, merging with the gaming and entertainment markets.

By 2050 traditional major media organisations will be extinct, with the last of the media barons and dynasties departed. Instead media control and dissemination will begin to shift to countless creative individuals and small-scale media groups operating cooperatively and seamlessly in tandem with the medium of the global commons and intelligent web.

At the same time there will be an inevitable loss of direct individual control over media outputs, as all aspects of news and event discovery, aggregation, processing, analysis and distribution are automated as a function of the combined fusing of artificial and human intelligence and the rigorous decision-making capacity of the Web 5.0.

The media will instead become a pervasive medium for recording local and global experience, generating new forms of knowledge and imersive entertainment for human civilisation- including automatic collection by embedded sensors in every artefact and environment on the planet, to instant delivery via ultrafast bandwidth and direct neural/brain connection. It will encompass, document and support the evolutionary progress of all cultural, political, scientific and technological experience of life's existence.

Web 5.0 starts to take control.