Predicting Tomorrow

The Wall Street Journal came out with a special section predicting the future of media use. The reporters interviewed media execs. techies, futurists and the like to figure out what's going to be new, and how we're going to use whatever it is. The story is a good read. They predict that digital technology will revolutionize everything from the way we shop to our favorite television shows to what kinds of information we want. The section also delves into what all of these changes will mean for our daily rituals. Here's a snippet:

But technology will continue to transform the rituals of everyday life -- sometimes in startling ways. Imagine televisions that project 3-D images into the middle of the living room, for a theater-in-the-round experience. And while we won't get those robot maids, our appliances might start "talking" to us through email alerts, letting us know when a part is getting worn down and needs to be replaced. Many other changes will be more subtle, as technology finds new ways into our daily routine. Commuters will still carry newspapers to work but will likely download them to a pocket-size computer that can also show TV news broadcasts. Shoppers will still be greeted at Wal-Mart, but a computer may be the one saying hello -- and reminding them of what they bought on their last visit. Friends will still send each other birth and wedding announcements, but the process will be virtually automated, thanks to alerts on social-networking sites.

Some of there predictions entail: More computers replacing employees (such as that Wal-Mart greeter), personalized everything (including retail clerks knowing not only what you bought last week but what your good friend bought last week), declining brand loyalty, and the publicizing of all things private. The seeds of a lot of these predictions are already well in place -- from the new Kindle book downloading at Amazon to the Facebook software that reports what our friends are buying online.

However, I'd like to point out one caveat: Humanity can be difficult to predict sometimes. A companion article has this quote from the 1998 predictions of the WSJ:

To their credit, some of 1998's forecasters correctly anticipated that social dynamics would be the hardest part of the puzzle to get right. As Ambuj Goyal, then vice president for systems and software at International Business Machines Corp., remarked a decade ago: "We have predicted the hardware speeds and feeds very well. We haven't done nearly as well in predicting how these machines will be used."

For example, I'm not sure that Tom Rosenstiel's prediction that people will no longer have primary news sources is so accurate. I think that human nature tends to like being loyal. What do people think? Do you have any predictions of your own, and more interestingly, what said prediction will mean for our lives?

Jay Rosen went off on the media (again), this time for the horse-race campaign coverage. He separates his points into nice, succinct criticisms of why the media "has" no brain (and note here how he uses the singular verb for plural media, denoting its singular mentality in working as a pack). His lead reads:

Just so you know, "the media" has no mind. It cannot make decisions. Which means it does not "get behind" candidates. It does not decide to oppose your guy... or gal. Nor does it "buy" this line or "swallow" that one. It is a beast without a brain. Most of the time, it doesn't know what it's doing.

And he continues by delineating the problem into: The herd of independent minds, convergence of judgement, special insight, removed from experience, and under the influence of each other and insiders. Indeed, much of the problem rests with issues of humanity -- the tendency to rely on who we know and our backgrounds and our instincts as social beings.

It is the beast without a brain, he writes. (I love how media watchers constantly refer to the press as a "beast." When I was a reporter, I always wondered, what did this make me? Was an eye of the beast? A paw? What a surreal experience to report and write, since I apparently did so not only as part of a sort of nebulous 'pack' but also without thinking about it.)

Frankly, I agree with all of Rosen's statements, and especially appreciated the nuanced description of the problem that broke down the notion of 'pack' journalism into characteristics of individual journalistic motivation.

But I get frustrated when we constantly see the problems of the press so well articulated in such a methodical manner without as much careful thought given to a blueprint for change. Rosen dedicates a couple paragraphs at the end of two pages of diatribe to any solution:

Here, the job of the campaign press is not to preempt the voters' decision by asking endlessly, and predicting constantly, who's going to win. The job is to make certain that what needs to be discussed will be discussed in time to make a difference - and then report on that.

He wants more "politics," without really laying out how journalists can rise above the human nature that often creates the situational dynamics of such reporting. Let's think a minute about some realistic avenues for journalists to tread, beyond the idea that we need more "issues" reporting. What does that mean specifically? How does a reporter quell the fear that causes them to 'pack' up?