One of my favourite columnists is Matthew Parris. His latest piece is entitled 'So much for world progress. We have failed. We're stuck.' It promotes the contrarian view that there has actually been little progress in the last fifty years in the West (accepting that developing countries have seen significant change). He also referenced this link to the February 1950 issue of Modern Mechanics magazine predicting how the world will be in 2000. The predictions are, by and large, wrong. Here is one paragraph which is fairly typical.

'When Jane Dobson cleans house she simply turns the hose on everything. Why not? Furniture (upholstery included), rugs, draperies, unscratchable floors — all are made of synthetic fabric or waterproof plastic. After the water has run down a drain in the middle of the floor (later concealed by a rug of synthetic fiber) Jane turns on a blast of hot air and dries everything. A detergent in the water dissolves any resistant dirt. Tablecloths and napkins are made of woven paper yarn so fine that the untutored eye mistakes it for linen. Jane Dobson throws soiled “linen” into the incinerator. Bed sheets are of more substantial stuff, but Jane Dobson has only to hang them up and wash them down with a hose when she puts the bedroom in order.'

This got me thinking about our ability to predict and how hopeless we probably are. We all remember predictions for the paperless office. Ha. Remember when libraries were going to get rid off all books and replace them with microfilm? Ha.

However, sneakily things do change (usually in an unpredicted fashion) and book publishing is changing. Last year we commissioned Jeff Gomez who is head of internet marketing at Holtzbrinck Publishers USA to write a book about these changes. It's called 'Print is dead' and will be published in print form this Autumn (or Fall). As part of writing the book Jeff has set up the brilliant Print is dead blog and I was particularly taken by this photo and quote from Woody Allen:

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”