12-21-2007, 10:30 AM
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Holidays, Friends and the Future
Have you ever heard of El-CID?
No, the ID is not the root IDentification as in RFID or auto-ID technology. El-CID stands for Electronically Coordinated Information Distribution. It is a concept that Bo Sacks coined back when cell phones were the size of toasters and the internet had not even bubbled, much less burst.
Mr. Sacks is a futurist and publishing guru, one of the first voices in that industry pushing publishers into the digital age. In fact, Bo publishes the oldest e-newsletter on the planet – which I take credit for having pointed out to him a few years back. He began publishing in 1993 when he had a free account at AOL as thanks from them for his being a beta-tester of their new email product, before “You’ve got mail” became a catch phrase.
When Bo first distributed his newsletter, the term electronic publishing was not in use. Better known as BoSacks, his daily mix of news broadcast, quotations and periodic rants is now read daily by almost 12,000 executives and leaders of all aspects of the media, with a focus on publishing.
You see, this is really a holiday column in disguise. Although we shall touch on technology, my real goal is to share some warm thoughts at this time of the year. And that starts with a salute to my best friend Bo who I grew up with and partnered some of my earliest publishing ventures with.
The electronic information distribution that Bo refers to in El-CID is a vision for a personalized information delivery system that we are now quite close to, I think. Apple’s iPhone is the closest thing to it so far; but it goes beyond that. Bo has actually refined his vision a bit since its inception and remains a few steps ahead; but any detailed description of this I’ll leave to him.
If you use RFID, you are also involved with electronic information distribution, aren’t you? It would not be wise to divorce the kind of information you distribute entirely from that distributed by e-publishers. We are not in the business of limitations. In fact, what keeps me enthusiastic about what I do is being around so many smart people dreaming the big dreams – and then going out and doing them.
In that spirit, I extract from the official BoSacks predictions for next year: It is not directly about what you do, but one never knows where the next lesson might come from, certainly not if you work with RFID and your job is to make possible what never had been before.
BoSacks 2008 Predictions (abridged): The writers’ strike will end and the public will in droves not return to TV as it was. Prime time will get shorter and shorter as it nears its death knell. The public at large moves onto the more stylized, personal, leisure time pursuits of MeMedia. Newspapers continue the trend to be magazines, and magazines become more focused and highly niche-ified. The Social networking hubbub will mature, peak, drift and then meld into what it should have been all along—a niche group of (fill in the blank) music listeners, readers, dentists, or manically connected wannabes.
Now, in putting up the sawhorses and the detour sign on RFID Street until the New Year, I share with you the annual holiday wish Bo sends his readers. Hoping you and yours – and me and my wife and daughter, too – find the wisdom to follow some of these wishes first written in 1513.
I SALUTE YOU!
There is nothing I can give you which you have not;
but there is much that, while I cannot give, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.
Take Heaven.
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant.
Take Peace.
The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.
Take Joy.
And so, at this holiday time, I greet you, with the prayer that for you, now and forever,
the day breaks and the shadows flee away.
-FRA GIOVANNI
To read the full BoSacks predictions, learn more about El-CID or sign up for his free newsletter, check out www.bosacks.com.
Last edited by AndyKowl : 12-21-2007 at 01:35 PM.
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