Ten years from now

"Here are the premises I have. Number one, there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form." -- Steve Ballmer in a Washington Post interview

We've seen premises like this before and they seem to be a combination of wishful thinking and fail. E-tailers expect spamming people who "haven't opted out" to generate word-of-mouth sales. We'll read screens instead of books. Video killed the radio star. Grey is the new black.

Usually, we're hearing it from some entrepreneur determined for their latest venture to succeed but in this case we're hearing it from Miscrosoft's new helmsman.

The belief that The New will utterly replace The Old is wrong on at least two counts :

First, The Old came to be that way because it actually offered something to someone and presumably still does. The New may not be required. A dead-trees book is my preference for sitting by a river with, no matter what delightful features Adobe have build into Reader.

Also, there are inevitably tools and techniques around the corner that we cannot envisage at the moment. Email was going to be a global communication panacea until SMS came along. The New that we end up confronting or adopting rarely turns out to be the one that we thought we glimpsed up ahead.

While Microsoft deliver their IP future to whoever is still using their product ten years from now, I'll probably still be visiting the library, picking up fanzines and flyers from record shops, browsing posters and papers with my coffee, throwing coins to buskers and generally being thankful that art and communication extend beyond the screen into The Big Room.