E-Media Tidbits

killrbeez, via Flickr (CC license) Rubber bracelets: harbinger of an increasingly visual culture that's undermining text-based news?

Futurist John Naisbitt, author of 1988 bestseller Megatrends, took the stage at this week's Digital Life Design conference in Munich. He discussed the trend toward a more visual culture, and how that might affect text-focused media. In his words, "When we talk about the death of newspapers, we are talking about the death of a certain culture -- not of newspapers necessarily."

What does he see coming next? "We are still in the frantic scramble to figure out what it all means. I look at the world as a picture puzzle. The pieces I get are just that, just pieces. I look at them and see which fits with which." One of the bigger developments he sees right now is that our culture is becoming more visual.

"On the word side, you can see that this is going down. Newspapers and magazines have to reinvent themselves, as people are reading less, especially young people. Then again, you have all the visual images coming up. Today, architecture is the most important art form in the world. Political movements identify with a color. People wear bracelets that indicate certain affiliations. But it is not either/or, it's just that the mix is changing. In today's mix we are having fewer newspapers, fewer and better magazines."