I eased myself into the Jacuzzi at the end of a long day. The previous eight hours had been spent in the company of Adobe chieftains and the publishing industry’s finest digital minds, discussing the future of our tablet and mobile publications and where Adobe saw the whole digital magazine marketplace moving over the next twelve months.
I always find such days enjoyable, if a little taxing on the grey matter. I am 42 after all, even if I don’t behave like I am. So, once events had concluded, what better way to relax and think through all the salient points raised than by visiting the underground spa below the Café Royal hotel on Regent Street, donning the old Speedos (I do work for a German company, you know) and enjoying a good soak. Adobe was putting me up for the night – might as well take advantage, I thought.
As I started to relax, bubbles ‘n’ all, I shut my eyes, considered the day’s events and how I’d write about the day in InPublishing. Guest speakers had entertained and informed; strategic debate was had and Adobe revealed future plans for its flagship software, DPS. So I know what’s to come in the coming twelve months in terms of software updates, but alas – I can’t talk about it, as I’m under NDA! Suffice to say, it is very exciting and Bauer’s DPS apps, specifically Empire, CAR, the Practical and Digital photo titles, Bike and MCN Sport, will improve considerably as a result.
However, there was plenty of other fascinating debate I can talk about, much triggered by the man who kick-started the day’s proceedings, an apparently well-known futurist I’d never heard of called Ben Hammersley. Described on his Wiki page as a ‘technologist, journalist, editor-in-chief of Wired and author’, he is a tattooed, mustachioed, bona fide crystal-ball wielder who prides himself on predicting what the future holds. And to be fair, he delivered a captivating lecture full of warnings, humour, hope and advice.
Two things he said struck me: firstly, his use of the urban phrase ‘meat puppet’ (more of that in a bit) and secondly, his reference to ‘Moore’s Law’. I’d never heard of Moore’s Law before but seemingly it can be used to demonstrate the inevitable end of print magazines, should we just sit on our arses and do nothing to address the digital revolution going on around us.
Moore’s Law
As a very simplistic definition, Moore’s Law states that computer processing power doubles every two years, which means that, as computers get more powerful, so they are capable of taking over more and more of the processes of our everyday lives – business, leisure, work, medicine and so on.
Hammersley’s warning was stark: “If you’re doing something that can be replaced by computers and you’re not addressing it, Moore’s Law will kill you in the end,” he prophesised. “And if the tech isn’t good enough to kill you now, it will in the future.”
As evidence, he cited examples of two companies – Blockbuster and Kodak – who didn’t adapt and therefore inevitably died, hamstrung by their legacy business. He emphasised the speed of their decline. Like print magazine publishing, both were at their peak at the turn of the century, both had digital opportunities (Netflix was in discussions with Blockbuster at one stage) and both assumed tech would never get to a stage to threaten them. After all, who would stream a movie or take a digital photo?
Frankly, the parallels with our industry were (are) a bit scary. The internet and tech is going to get better, and as it gets better and easier to use for publishers and consumers alike, so it will continue to pressure print until one day, print is no longer viable as a business – first for individual brands, then, maybe, for whole publishing houses. This isn’t going to happen overnight and I would bet that there will still be viable businesses with print platforms in six years (possibly via controlled circ as a no2 to the digital platforms) but I’d also bet there are going to be a lot less consumer print magazines on sale using current business models in 2020 as there are now.
Which leads me on to the somewhat vulgar term, ‘meat puppets’. People who are ‘meat puppets’, explained Hammersley, are generally those doing a job that will be taken over by tech in the near future.
He cited the ‘Uber’ app as an example. “All taxi drivers are meat puppets,” he claimed, to audible gasps. Uber, he added, was merely laying the infrastructure for driverless cabs to be the norm in the not too distant future. The intimation for us was that people working solely in the print business might also be ‘meat puppets’.
Think about that for a second. These are scary times. But they are also massively exciting times, times of opportunity, and there are people out there who are working hard to transform publishing businesses into ones that are digitally vibrant, agile, forward-thinking and smart. As Mitch Green – Adobe’s director of product management – told me afterwards, “We all need to do something. We might not know exactly what works yet, but we need to do something to facilitate it…”
Which we are. Thanks to companies like Adobe, digital publishing in twelve months’ time will be very different to what it is today. The publishing industry a further decade down the line will be almost unrecognisable to today. The future as laid out by Hammersley may or may not come to pass. But one thing we definitely have to do is work hard to absolutely ensure it doesn’t.
Oh, and by the way, in case you were wondering, I don’t really wear Speedos…
