Erin’s run-down of what’s new is pretty complete. I would also throw in mobile devices, which have yet to reach even a tiny fraction of their future potential. The iPhone is maaaaybe at the stage of the French videotex system. Maybe. We will, in our lifetimes, see a totally immersive, transparent, ubiquitous online experience. Full-on cybernetics. The man-machine barrier will very quickly fade, and we’ll be online all the time. The iPhone will be built in. On a heads up display. Always on. Paying for our purchases, messaging our friends, and optimizing bus travel. Nerds and sports nuts will have to come up with something new to do at bars, because arguing over trivia will no longer be fun. The future of online journalism is this. They will provide the content.

I think this essay also makes a point about how people have (hopefully) learned their lesson when it comes to guessing what the future might be like. From Bush’s descriptions of how these future devices might work, its made plain how even the smartest scientists are bound by extent of their experience. He got the concepts and goals of our current technological revolutions, but I’m still waiting for the walnut on my forehead that takes pictures. Apple is probably working on it.

Computers were large, clunky, expensive and unrealistic for the average homeowner. However, as technology and our infrastructure have improved, internet content has become of greater quality, and the internet is much more readily available throughout the world. With that said, journalism is growing exponentially with the services provided by major wireless phone companies now.

We can access the internet from our phones. Let’s face it: they’re not phones any more. That IPhone, Blackberry, Trio, or whatever you have in your pocket is the gateway to the future of online content. Check your email. Watch the highlights from the game. Get the news, maps, pictures, or anything you want on a regular computer all on a three inch by two inch device that fits comfortably in your pocket.

This is the future of journalism - another new technology. Your mobile computer that also makes phone calls.

I found it interesting that the French were the only ones who could make the early videotex systems work - by giving it away for free - and how the Americans couldn’t get anyone to buy their systems because they charged so much. and charged for every little thing. It resonates today in how all the newspaper sites have stopped charging for access because people rather not pay and how the television, music and movie industries are slowly, painfully learning the same lessons.

There’s definitely a few more chapters to be written about the other media companies have dealt with the rise of the Internet. And the difference between how the newspapers handled it.

Great Britain was really on top of the whole computer thing as well, which I never knew.

One item that I found interesting throughout the article was the notion of companies having problems profiting from the wares of the internet, first with British Telecom’s attempts in the late 1980s, and then with Gateway’s attempts around the same period.

Fast forwarding to the present, mainstream media is still struggling with profiting from internet success (one example is how mainstream television is slow to deal with the growing success of online television outlets such as Hulu.com).

I also found it very interesting that the first journalism site on the web was launched by the University of Florida College of Journalism & Communications, as that is located in my home state.