It’s a magazine Jim, but not as we know it.
Mark Twain once said, “The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated”. Which pretty well sums up my thinking in regard to the doomsayers who proclaim that magazines (and by association, newspapers) are dead or at least dying a slow demise.
I don’t think either will have to die, but they will have to be different. Being a voracious reader, I have been following the emerging ‘reading’ technologies with keen interest. There are sparkling new devices popping up at an amazing rate, all vying for market domination. Remember when the Sony Walkman owned portable cassette music, then came the iPod and it was goodnight Walkman? A similar tussle for ownership is being fought out in trying to come up with a new format to evolve how we consume ‘printed’ media.
Amazon Kindle looked like a possible contender. Then Barnes & Noble (the American Bookstore chain) released its own e-reader, the Nook.
But I think I’ve seen something closer to how the future of magazines might look. It’s a thing called the Berg, currently under development by a company called Bonnier (out of Stockholm, Sweden).
Unlike the Kindle, the Berg captures many of the characteristics that make reading magazines appealing. Watch the short demonstration video, it’s only seven minutes, and you’ll get an idea how we might be consuming our favourite titles in the very near future. Your mum may soon be saying, “Could you pass me the Women’s Weekly tablet please?”
