BoSacks Speaks Out: Shakespeare Was Wrong!

BoSacks Speaks Out: Shakespeare Was Wrong!
www.bosacks.com


“What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet”
William Shakespeare quotes (English Dramatist, Playwright and Poet, 1564-1616)

I was collaborating on a new project with some fellow publishing futurists today. Communicating internationally via SKYPE, as makes sense to us futurists, I came across a new term that I had not heard of before. I think it is brilliantly simple in describing this particular next generation.

The term is Screenager. This would be the demographic born into the world of ever present computerization. Screenagers are technologically proficient young people at the earliest of ages. They are the first generation who at the time of their birth, grow up with 500 television channels, multiple computers and the ability to use them. They have MP3’s, instant messaging, cellular phones with cameras and an instant connection to the Internet anywhere at any time. They absorb and retrieve information like no other generation before. They have a googolplex, (the number not the company) of global information possibilities that is unprecedented and still endlessly growing.

How Screenagers affect the publishing world is still being played out. Do they read? I think the answer is yes. Yes, but not like us pre-screeners. Are they knowledgeable? Again I think the answer is yes. Yes, but, but they do not absorb and process information like us pre-screeners.

And the final question tonight for us publishers is, will Screeners need and want actual books, magazines and newspapers as we pre-screeners have grown accustomed to? Will they be comfortable reading our valued content in the traditional method of dead tree delivery, or will they in fact insist on the screened version?

BoSacks
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