The Future: All the News That's Fit to Type

Why the heck should you keep blogging? As time goes on, Electronic writing, including blogs, will change more and more for the better. Can you imagine the types of sites and features will be available in the future? We could have a site for every type of person out there, with features that will be personalized for every person. If future technology heads in that direction, it would most likely become so easy to use that everyone will want to take part in producing material. With everyone taking part, electronic writing will be very mainstream.

Electronic writing allows for such a large user base that, in 2006, Time Magazine named “You” as The Person of The Year. Time Magazine decided to make everyone Person of The Year because they saw the amount of influence electronic publishing has had on our world. Popular sites like YouTube and MySpace have allowed users to create material that is available to anyone with a computer and the Internet. More electronic publishing sites will continue to appear in the future, giving users more innovative ways to publish their material on the internet.

Electronic writing has become more mainstream through the websites of newspapers and publications. Major newspapers, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, have websites that contain the same content, and more, than their printed publication. Readers of the publications’ print versions will be inclined to visit their website in addition to, or instead of, reading the print version, because of the websites’ ease of use and quick accessibility. The rise in number of users will result in a broader audience reading electronic writing, including blogs. Many of those users will be inclined to produce their own material online; as a result, it will broaden the user base producing material electronically.

To make electronic writing more mainstream, many writers have started making the transition from print to other formats, like the e-book. Tom King from Arrow Publications wrote, “With the advent of the Sony ‘Reader Digital Book’ and Amazon's ‘Kindle,’ readers now have the option of carrying around hundreds of books on a device no larger than a pocket book”. Many publishers are starting to publish their books in both print and electronically through the e-book. Many blogs and other online publications are also available to download on the e-book. As electronic writing becomes more popular, many users will transition from print books to other formats like the e-book. Of the many e-book users in the future, those that aren’t already contributing to electronic writing will be more inclined to, because they work so well with e-books. The addition of multiple electronic writing formats will make it easier for more people to join the electronic writing experience.

Will the e-book be the dominant format in the future? When books have been around for hundreds of years, would something like the e-book be able to replace a paper book? The answer is yes. If it isn’t the e-book, it will be some other form of electronics that will become the most popular format in the future. Lori James writes, “‘People say that they enjoy holding a book. But at one point my father couldn't imagine giving up vinyl records in favor of CDs’”(King). That same trend will also be present in electronic writing. Sure, there will be plenty of paper books out there to read from, but there might be just as many e-books available too. Electronic writing is another trend that will gain dominance in a matter of time due to electronic mediums similar to the e-book.

The e-book will not be the only format for electronic writing in the future; “A new world is emerging in which all knowledge will eventually be deliverable to everyone everywhere in a variety of formats”(Dougherty). With a variety of formats available in the future, skeptics of electronic writing will have a format available to them that will eventually get rid of their skepticism. With less skeptics of electronic writing, there will be a larger number of participants. The larger the user base becomes, the closer it will get to “everyone”. Electronic writing will connect a large number of people together that weren’t connected in any way before.

There are specific sites that make it easier for teachers and students to make their own blogs. School Web Lockers created “a new blogging feature that allows K-12 educators to create blogs in minutes, turning simple text into a dynamic online forum for posting important news on projects, assignments and tests”(Wire). Sites similar to that one make blogging very easy to do for inexperienced users. That trend will continue with many other types of users. More users will partake in electronic writing as it becomes easier and easier to use.

Schools aren’t just focusing on online resources to help advance the environment that their curriculum is taught in. Many schools around the world have started changing their teaching environment to one based on computers and technology. “The communication and information technology revolution has set in motion a worldwide process of transition from an industrial to an information oriented society” (El-Koumy). In many countries, part of this transition is installing new computers and technology in every classroom. With access to computers, students will be able to learn the skills necessary to excel in the technology based work environment that we are beginning to have. With so many students around the world being immersed in an electronic environment, it will become the norm for a great percentage of the future world. With such a reliance on technology, most people will use it to communicate with each other. With such a high number of people using electronic writing, it will become that much more mainstream.

Politics are also being affected by electronic writing. “‘Political blogs are giving our presidential candidates' grassroots supporters and detractors the opportunity to influence others unlike any prior election’”(Newswire). That’s just one of the many ways the internet has influenced politics. Bloggers will continue to write about political politicians in the future, affecting which candidates will be elected. Our government will run differently with different candidates. If a candidate was elected to a certain position because of electronic writing, more people will pay more attention to electronic writing and participate in it.

Electronic writing sites have recently started to focus on certain demographics. One specific example is the website BlogHer.com. BlogHer is a site dedicated to women’s blogs. It is linked to a multitude of blogs written by women. This site has given women their own little area on the internet for them to write and read blogs made only by women. A recent survey of the women on BlogHer reported that, “36.2 million women write and read blogs every week and approximately half consider blogs a ‘highly reliable’ or ‘very reliable’ source of information and advice about everything from products to presidential candidates” (Business Wire). Blogging has started to become a major part of women’s lives, with such a large number of them participating in it. This trend will continue in the future, with an increasing number of women using blogs. With about half the world being women, it won’t be long before electronic writing is as mainstream as television.

Electronic writing isn’t just affecting what is mainstream, it’s also the other way around. Have you ever been writing something in Microsoft Word and misspelled a brand name? Well if you have, you may notice that the built-in spell checker will correct you for doing so. “Brand names... [have] managed to quickly find their way into what's arguably the framework for much of the communicating western society does today” (Rubinstein). What does it mean when brand names have infected our spell checkers? It is a sign that corporations have noticed how popular electronic writing has become. If a large number of people are using a word processor with spell check, it gives corporations another outlet to advertise their brand name. It’s just another form of advertising that just happens to be very discrete. The fact that major corporations have noticed the number of users partaking in electronic writing means it really is becoming mainstream, and will continue to do so in the future.

As technology changes over time, it will replace many of the writing instruments we are used to. For example, there has been an increase in the number of people using tablet PCs. Tablet PCs eliminate the keyboards of laptops and leave you with computers that you can write on with a special electronic pen. Tablet PCs have been around for quite a while, but more recently they have been able to advance the writing recognition software on it to such a degree that it can decipher even the worst of handwriting. “For journalists, it could well signal the death-knell of the spiral-bound notebook with its copious shorthand notes” (Kemp). When the technology is developed to a certain degree, it would very likely “signal the death-knell of the spiral-bound notebook”. It would save paper, time, and money for many companies and consumers. You would still have the ability to write everything out, like many journalists are used to, but it would translate your scribbles into legible type. Once it is on your computer, it would be easy to e-mail it, print it, or do anything else you you can with your writing, and anyone could easily read it. With that kind of appeal, many people who are used to writing things out on paper wouldn’t hesitate to buy a tablet PC. When enough people own a one, there will be no question about how mainstream electronic writing will be.

If everyone hasn’t figured it out already, they will eventually notice and adjust to the electronic writing transition. Many companies, schools, and websites have all began the transition from standard writing to electronic writing. The future of writing itself is electronic writing. Everyone will have a blog, use instant and text messaging, have a tablet PC, and use all other forms of electronic writing in the future. Ok, it won’t be that extreme, but the majority of people will be using electronics to communicate.