In 2008 Google and Amazon will have merged into Googlezon;

In 2010 Microsoft and Googlezon are fighting the News Wars;

And in 2014 the New York Times has gone offline and become a print newspaper for the elite only.

In short that’s what Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson believed (in November 2004) how the future of media would look like ten years from then. Watch the original EPIC 2014 video, or the updated January 2005 EPIC 2015 version.

Correct? Not sure

Disturbing? Somewhat

Interesting? Definitely!

In any case this is an admirable and well-executed effort to describe the future of social and mainstream media.

In contradiction, at a mini-seminar on blogging that I visited yesterday, I was surprised by the lack of vision that was being projected. Renowned companies were merely trying to describe the trend that’s called social media and how to start incorporating it in their (PR) strategy. Even the monitoring of blogs was considered to be revolutionary by most. Come on, we can do better than that!

Is the corporate world still underestimating the impact of social media on their business? Why aren’t we all listening in on the the biggest coffeehouse on Earth?Didn’t we read and learn from the great Business Week articles on blogging one-and-a-half or even two years ago? Shouldn’t we by now all know exactly what RSS is?

And why are we – as PR consultants – hesitant to formulate and disseminate a visionary outlook on the future of media, while we should lead the way?

Or am I just too pessimistic and are we on par with social media...?

I doubt it...