My previous blog predicting the course of the publishing industry over the next few years was so successful that I’m adding future predictions to my repertoire of blog topics. In fact, here is my next installment and the first of my Mostly Bogus news from the world of electronics and publishing.
The latest Mostly Bogus News from the Disinformation News Network…
Dateline: Jan 11, 2021
HIC Apps
Google and Amazon announced today two new apps for the increasingly popular human identity chips (HIC). As most of our readers know, HIC were invented ten years ago and last year were included in an Identity Assurance law that legislates such chips will be embedded in the forearm of babies shortly after birth, to assist in locating lost or missing children. While such chips have previously been passive devices, the newest generation uses the minute electrical impulses generated by the surrounding muscle tissue to make the chips active. This has allowed small apps to run, including the latest two from industry giants Google and Amazon.
The Google HIC-app, known as G-Loc, will allow parents to view the location of their children on Google maps. This is expected to be a boon for both parents and law enforcement personnel in locating children who may have wandered off or become lost or even kidnapped. However, civil rights activists have already raised alarms about this service, pointing out that the same apps could be used by spouses to track the location of their errant significant others, not to mention the effect this technology may have on the ability of students to evoke their right to play truant. It remains to be seen what limitations lawmakers may set on this new breakthrough technology.
Amazon also announced today that their HIC-app, dubbed KHIC, will allow readers to download e-books to their HIC. These books can then be read via any available display using a Bluetooth technology, including the increasingly popular, new wave reading glasses and contact lenses. This technology frees the reader from carrying any type of e-reader as content is delivered on demand to the HIC and from there can be displayed on any nearby display device.
For those readers who prefer audio books, KHIC will stream the audio version of the book directly to any Bluetooth-equipped hearing aid or headsets. It is reported to work very well with auditory implants surgically implanted to correct deafness, although there are rumors that listening to too many audio books in one sitting may lead to distraction, impatience, and a general inability to listen when other people are talking.
However, since most conversations take place via tweets and instant messaging, this is not seen as a real issue for audiophiles, most of whom scoffed at the notion that their social skills might suffer if they preferred to listen to the voices in their head over those of their significant others. One audiophile was quoted as saying, "What? Wait a minute, this is the really good part..."
Late Breaking Update
Jan 12, 2012 - A wife took an axe to her husband today after discovering him in flagrante delecto with a pair of co-eds claiming to be from the University of Boston. The wife, identified as I. M. Cummins, was a member of the Boston police department and had purportedly been working on a case involving a pair of missing teenaged girls. She was issued a search warrant based upon geographic information obtained through Google’s newest G-Loc app and tracked the girls to room 313 in the local Ho-Down hotel and convention center. Detective Cummins discovered the girls doing unspeakable things to her husband who was inconveniently handcuffed to the bed at the time. His bonds prevented his expeditious escape, allowing his wife time to find the hotel’s fire axe and use it to free her husband from his restraints by relieving him of most of his limbs and head.
The girls returned unharmed and in excellent spirits to their parents.
The hotel maids, however, subsequently filed a complaint concerning their unsavory working conditions due to the occasional unpleasant surprise found in and around the bed in room 313.
More Related News
After a group of innovative students used KHIC to download and view the answers to their final exam in Moral Philosophy at Yale, Amazon is considering the addition of a Professor-Control add-on to KHIC. The add-on will allow teachers and other officials to shut down any KHIC running within 50 yards of their KHIC. Civil Rights groups are monitoring this to ensure it’s not used to prevent readers from accessing and enjoying e-books whenever and wherever they wish, including books previously listed as banned or just plain stupid (JPS).
While the three students involved were expelled from Yale, MIT offered them a scholarship to work on a project involving the development of additional HIC-apps for the Department of Defense. Details concerning such a project, or even confirmation that such a project exists, were unavailable at this time.
Publishing—What the heck is going on?
Everyone has their own opinion about the publishing industry and where it’s headed. Heck, read J. A. Konrath’s blog http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ for a fascinating look at book publishing and the growth of e-publishing. Is traditional, NY-based, Big House publishing in trouble? Morphing into something else?
Who knows?
It’s all speculation. Me? I just thought it might be fun at the start of 2011 to take a look at publishing. Perhaps it’s just all that Science Fiction I read in my younger years that’s compelling me to do this. Perhaps my family is right and it’s deep-seated, intensely morbid insanity.
What-ever.
Some of these predictions are my own wish-list. Some are just fun. Some are fun, but also on my wish-list. I leave it to you to decide what might be real and what is just demonic possession.
Projections for the Publishing Industry
2011
Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, the big 6 NY Publishers became the big 3. Several medium-sized publishers merge to become one of the 3 new, big 3 NY publishers.
Sales of e-books continued to skyrocket with reports from Amazon that they now sell three e-books for every paper/hardcover book sold. After this announcement, a Barnes and Noble spokesperson is reported as saying, “Hey, so are we! Wait—no! We’re selling FOUR times as many e-book as paperbacks! Especially since we’ve closed 40% of our stores in less productive markets this year. No—wait. Don’t report that last part. Just say we’re selling four times as many e-books as paperbacks. Wait! Can I get a do-over on this interview?”
A standard format for e-books is under discussion to allow readers to more easily move their virtual libraries from one type of e-book reader to another. E-book virtual libraries are under discussion by leading technologists so readers can keep their stash of books “in the cloud” and permanently available regardless of the devices used for reading/storing the books.
In a surprise move, the Federal Government takes over management of the public library system in the U.S. due to issues with funding and the rate of closures. Feds claim they will examine hosting virtual libraries for readers, too, as part of the public library system and as a way to fund the remaining physical libraries.
2012
Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, the big 3 NY Publishers became the Big One.
Universities and Colleges now require students to have an e-book reader and all text books used are e-books downloaded from Google.
Harvard accidentally grants an author a PHD in English Literature and a tenured professorship when the author is listed on the Times Bestsellers list before they realize the author is self-published. One of Harvard’s non-tenured professors hangs himself in his office in response. Nobody finds the body for three months, leading to the accidental identification of the mummified remains as a medieval scholar who went missing from Cambridge and was widely believed to be brought to the New World as a curiosity to trade to the Native Americans for beaver pelts during the 17th century. The mistake isn’t discovered until his suicide note is found, inexplicably left in an antique typewriter in his office.
A standard format for e-books is adopted. Readers are unsure, however, if they wish to pay the exorbitant fees to have the Feds maintain their virtual library for them in the public library cloud.
In December, in another surprise move after what is dubbed “The Fed Cloud Debacle”, Starbucks strikes a deal with the Federal Government and takes over management of the public library system, incorporating them into their café system. The heavily caffeinated reading public starts consuming books at a faster rate, pumping some much needed energy into the print publishing industry.
2013
The Big One publisher initiates a new program to find authors by trolling e-book sites. After an outcry from prolific and very articulate writers, software vendors include the Big One in their SPAM filtering to cut down on the number of annoying e-mails writers receive, begging for authors to submit their work.
Three agents kill themselves when the last of their authors send them the now traditional “Bite Me” e-mails informing them they are now self-publishing, thank you, and raking in five times as much money as they earned as traditional authors.
Writer organizations such as Mystery Writers, Science Fiction Writers, and Romance Writers of America, open their doors to the self-published authors. They have so much money they don’t know what to do with it, so they start buying management of literacy programs from the Feds, who are glad to get the money, even if they have to shut down and RIF 50% of the Department of Education.
After the Feds put pressure on them, Starbucks Café and Library system opens up a soup kitchen extension that offers “Soup and a Book” to support the homeless who want to read. After three months, one heavily caffeinated customer spills soup all over his e-book reader due to the “Starbucks Shakes” and he’s electrocuted and dies. The soup kitchens are closed.
2014
Agents are forced to register in a central system so software vendors can include agents in their SPAM filtering to cut down on the number of annoying e-mails writers receive, begging for authors to submit their work. Impetus is added to this when agents bog down Internet traffic with their desperate, whiny e-mails begging authors to choose me!
Five well-known writers who clung to traditional publishing leap off the Empire State building holding hands as a final protest when the NY Times Bestsellers list is dominated by self-published writers writing the enormously popular Science Fiction Romance series: Werewolves are from Mars, Vampires are from Venus. The news article announcing this tragedy misspells all but one of the author’s names and has to issue a retraction which no one reads. However, one lone blogger in Detroit sees the retraction and mistakenly believes all the authors—except one—survived. This leads to a revolutionary phenomenon in e-books purported to be from the four remaining authors about werewolves and vampires who fall in love during long space voyages. These e-books are widely believed to be written by the authors’ ghosts. The e-books outsell all of the authors’ previous works, combined.
Ghosthunters, International does a show where they prove the four authors’ ghosts are writing from a castle in Scotland, using the ENIAC computer abandoned there in 1949, and a 300-BAUD modem to access an obscure bulletin board system with a connection to the Internet running in the pantry of one of Elton John's mansions in England.
News agencies begin to predict the end of e-books because of general illiteracy and the fact that anyone who can complete a manuscript can be a published author. Obviously, only the illiterate can write a book nowadays given the current hostile publishing climate. And who has time for reading when everyone spends all their time on blogging, tweeting, social networking, and e-mailing?
So there you have it. A look at the next four years in publishing.
Google and Amazon announced today two new apps for the increasingly popular human identity chips (HIC). As most of our readers know, HIC were invented ten years ago and last year were included in an Identity Assurance law that legislates such chips will be embedded in the forearm of babies shortly after birth, to assist in locating lost or missing children. While such chips have previously been passive devices, the newest generation uses the minute electrical impulses generated by the surrounding muscle tissue to make the chips active. This has allowed small apps to run, including the latest two from industry giants Google and Amazon.
