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Computing is rapidly evolving into a real “ecology,” where chips will be embedded in everything from your coffee mug to your sweater. The above video produced by Mickey McManus’ (@mickeymcmanus) design consultancy, MAYA, illustrates this idea.

Also see Discover Magazine’s (@DiscoverMag) article, “The Internet May Soon Include All of the Things Around You.”

B. Bonin Bough (@boughb), Global Head of Digital for PepsiCo, writes in Forbes (@Forbes) about his discussion at the Milken Global Conference (@MilkenInstitute) with Nicholas Carr, renowned author who’s investigating how technology is impacting the way we think. Bough asks the question, “How often do we outsource traditional ways of thinking to smart devices, choosing to sacrifice learning and let the technology think for us?” And he suggests we’re losing something in the process.

Read this in full.

In the BigThink.com (@bigthink) interview below, Carr describes the technologies that have reshaped the way our brains work.

Talk with us at Somersault (@smrsault) to discern how your publishing and marketing strategies need to be positioned for the future's blue ocean opportunities. Be sure to bookmark and use daily our SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

According to new report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., the world e-readers market is forecast to reach 53,870,000 units by the year 2017. The global economic recession, which put several industries under pressure and in a state of turmoil, has failed to rattle the market for e-readers making it an exceptional product.

The report states that the “growing popularity of these handy devices is pushing the book, magazine, and newspaper publishing industries to redefine their existence in this digital age and in the aftermaths of economic turmoil. Although sales of ebooks presently account for only a small portion of the overall book publishing market, with the passage of time, this segment is forecast to emerge a mainstream market.”

Read this in full.

Radio-Info.com (@radio_info) says, “Teens today are the most digitally connected generation we have ever seen.” A study just released by Nielsen (@NielsenWire) on teen media usage offers the following insight.

Teens:

·         Are the Heaviest Mobile Video Viewers

·         Are More Receptive to Mobile Advertising than their Elders

·         Out-Text All Other Age Groups

·         Talk Less on the Phone: Besides

·         Grew Up in the Age of Social Media—and It Shows

·         Watch Less TV than the General Population:

·         Spend Less Time on their Computers

Radio-Info says, “Based on this research and other key findings from recent studies on teen consumers, here are four considerations for marketers aspiring to reach teens today:

1. Speak in bullet points.

2. Don’t be “just another ad.”

3. Stand Out

4. Think Multi-Platform

Read this in full.

Damon Poeter (@dpoeter) writes in PCMag.com (@PCMag) that the percentage of adult Internet users using sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is now 65%, up from 61% a year ago, according to a report released by the Pew Research Center (@pewinternet & @pewresearch).

Accounting for the percentage of adults who don't use the Internet at all, that still means that half of all Americans now use social networking sites, Pew researchers say.

The number of Americans using such sites has exploded since 2005, when Pew found that just 8% of Internet users, or about 5% of all adult Americans, said they did. The percentage of Internet users saying they use social networking sites has more than doubled since 2008, when 29% of respondents said they were using them, according to the Pew survey.

Pew reports that women aged 18 to 29 are the most voracious users of social networking sites, with 89% of Internet users in that group participating in such sites and 69% of them reporting that they do so daily. Accounting for all age groups, 69% of adult women using the Internet say they’re social networkers as compared with 60% of men.

Read the story in full.

Read the research report.

Also see HubSpot’s (@HubSpot) article, “46 Million Americans Check Social Media Sites Multiple Times Per Day,” based on the 2011 Social Habit report, released by Edison Research and Arbitron.

What implications does this research hold for your publishing and marketing strategy? Let Somersault help you think it through.

Tablet ownership is skewing beyond the market of young men, according to NielsenWire (@NielsenWire).

Back in Q3 2010, for example, 62% of tablet owners were under the age of 34 and only 10% were over the age of 55. By Q2 2011, only 46% of tablet owners were under the age of 34 and the percentage of those over 55 had increased to 19%.

Ereader ownership is changing too. Sixty-one percent of all eReader owners are now female, compared to 46% in Q3 2010. As Econsultancy (@Econsultancy) says, tablets are from Mars and ereaders are from Venus.

(Smartphone owners are now evenly split between male and female and tablets remain primarily male.)

Read this in full.

In a new Pew Research Center (@pewinternet) report, 49% of college presidents use a tablet computer at least occasionally and 42% use an e-reader. 

How will the fact that tablets and ereaders are becoming more mainstream impact your publishing plans?

An article in the Los Angeles Times (@latimestech) says brands such as Kraft and Adidas are considering making use of facial recognition technology in a bid to provide shoppers with more targeted information in stores.

Technology company Intel is one of a number of firms that has created software capable of scanning the faces of consumers, and then determining the approximate age and gender of the person concerned.

Christopher O'Malley, director, retail marketing, of Intel's embedded and communications unit, says, “You can put this technology into kiosks, vending machines, digital signs. It's going to become a much more common thing in the next few years.”

Read this in full.

The above video is a clip from the movie Minority Report, in which the character John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, walks in a mall in the year 2054 while his eyes are getting scanned by sensors connected to 3D screens that call to him directly by his name to get his attention to display “personal” advertising messages.

The following video demonstrates the reality of what’s already here.

Is this type of advertising personally invasive or strategically helpful to consumers?

Warc (@WarcEditors) reports on a new Cisco (@Cisco_Mobility) study that says US families are engaging in an increasingly diverse range of digital activities, and are using more wireless devices than ever before.

·         The most popular digital pastimes among the respondents are browsing the Web and accessing email, logging a total uptake of 92%.

·         Regularly downloading music and video score 67%; consumers are turning to user-generated content platforms like YouTube, video-on-demand services, and properties such as iTunes.

·         Two-thirds of respondents often use a tablet or smartphone via their wireless network at home.

·         Devices connected to in-home WiFi: game consoles (66%), smartphones (41%), and wireless printers (36%).

·         62% of adults use the Internet in this way on a daily basis; 71% do so between 5-7 days a week.

·         Based on parents’ estimates, 46% of children log on to the Web in the same fashion every day, and 54% participate in this activity at least 5 days per week.

Consumers are now embracing a wireless connected lifestyle for the entire family.

Read this in full.

The latest in the Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) / Digital Book World (@digibookworld) free Webcast series, "Digital Textbooks: Innovations From the Academic Business Model" (#dbw) featured panelists Matt MacInnis, CEO, Inkling (@inkling), Eric Frank, co-founder, Flat World Knowledge (@flat_world), and Brett Sandusky, director of product innovation for Kaplan Publishing (@ReadKaplan).

The panelists all agreed that with expansion of digital capabilities, publishing has become an ongoing venture with continuous opportunities for improvement, thanks to the 2-way communication with readers. MacInnis said the iPad is the vehicle that’s reinventing the textbook from the bottom up. Inkling doesn’t try to emulate a book; e.g., it doesn’t paginate. He said Inkling’s vision for publishing is moving “from pages to objects, from serial to hierarchical, from monolithic to modular, from static to dynamic, from passive to interactive.”

Read this in full.

The discussion's archive is available until August 16 and can be found here.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil (@KurzweilAINews) was interviewed on Jimmy Kimmel Live about his vision of humans merging with technology in the coming years to create The Singularity. The above videos are Part 1 and 2 of that interview. If even a tenth of what he predicts comes true, it will further revolutionize the world.

You’ll also want to read our previous blogpost “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal.”

And you’ll want to listen to this On The Media (@onthemedia) segment, “Our Future with Technology.”

What do you see as the implications of these possibilities from a Christian point of view? From a publishing point of view? Add your comments below.

Join Somersault (@smrsault) in keeping an eye on how today’s technology will influence our future by reading the Somersault Futurist Daily News and using the SomersaultNOW dashboard of more than 300 articles and RSS feeds designed for publishers and marketers; especially note the Future tab. And tell your colleagues. Thanks!

An article in The Daily Beast / Newsweek (@thedailybeast) by Malcolm Jones profiles the fabulous new children’s ebook The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (@MorrisLessmore) by Moonbot Studios LA, LLC (@moonbotstudios). It says the ebook “embraces the potential of the iPad like nothing else.”

Dumped into a black-and-white landscape littered with wreckage, Morris Lessmore encounters a savior of sorts, who tosses him a flying book that leads him to a library set out in the countryside. Here he takes up residence, learns to care for the thousands of books he lives with and begins to write down his own story, an effort that takes him all his life.

In every scene, the viewer has to help move the action along — speeding up the wind that carries Morris away, spinning the house on which he flies through the storm, spelling out words in the cereal bowl with which Morris feeds the books (cereal like Alphabits, of course). But the interaction is not merely some computer form of a pop-up book. Besides spelling words, you can play a piano keyboard and make the books dance, and if you don’t want narration, you can mute it, and if you don’t want text, you can remove that, too. You can’t change the story, but the app designers have nevertheless found ways to make you feel very much a part of the story.

On the Morris Lessmore website it says

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is a poignant, humorous allegory about the curative powers of story. Using a variety of techniques (miniatures, computer animation, 2D animation), award-winning author/illustrator William Joyce and co-director Brandon Oldenburg present a hybrid style of animation that harkens back to silent films and M-G-M Technicolor musicals.

Read this in full.

A one-paragraph summary of the article is here.

Is this a game-changer in the production of ebooks? How will your publishing plans change as a result? Let Somersault help.