There’s a new SF Signal Mind Meld up and I’m in it. They asked what the publishing industry would be like in 10 years time. I figured that this was pretty much impossible to predict, so I went for a bit of SFnal dystopia. Of course like any dystopian prediction the idea is that it should not come true because people are forewarned. On the other hand, in all the time I have been publishing online it has never ceased to amaze me that big business has let me get away with it. It would be so easy for ISPs to require a fee before they will serve up your domain.
You may think that this could never happen because people will protest, but we humans have a long history of giving up freedom in favor of convenience. We still fly, no matter what indignities we are put through in the name of “security”. We buy Kindle books despite the DRM because the one-click purchase and automatic download is so convenient. All the media companies need to do in order to kill the Internet is to come up with something that enough of us find attractive enough that we won’t care if all the rest goes away.
And talking of the future, there’s a new Locus Roundtable post up. In this one we talk about whether science fiction’s view of the future has been overtaken by reality.
The thing about the net is, the whole route-around-censorship thing. I noticed just yesterday, looking at Netcraft’s 2010 numbers, that there’s been a huge uptick in the number of sites Google is serving up, mostly due to Blogger… which I can’t *prove* has to do with the problems on Facebook, but I can’t think of anything else that big to provoke that kind of movement… yeah, the main part of the net may prove to be a steaming cesspool of arsenic sauce by 2020, but I think us geeks will find a way to keep our bitstream cool and filtered…
And I don’t fly anymore, and I don’t do Kindles. And while I may not be in the majority, I’m far from the only one. And the trend is up, not down, as in more folks are doing as I do. And eventually the market has to conform. (I saw just last night, McDonalds is offering oatmeal for breakfast. Healthy, yaknow. Healthy? McDonalds? Consumer pressure….)
Glenn: I hope you are right, but the market only has to conform to what the majority wants. If it was always on our side there would be no giant chain stores, no Microsoft Windows, and no Twilight.