Tech Forward:

I just told someone the other day that we’re moving more and more away from being a written word society. It starts with print and eventually the same thing will happen online. Mark my words: 95% of our communication will all be audio or video in the next 5-7 years – possibly sooner.

How do I know?

1) Because people are basically lazy. The energy it takes to type something, it’s much easier to say it.

2) More and more ‘newbies’ who don’t know how to type and want to squash the Mavis Beacon learning curve will want a short cut. That short cut is audio and video. We all learn how to talk. Not everyone learns how to type fast enough to keep pace with today’s flow of information.

3) Heck, even Tom Peters is raving about the latest version of Dragon Naturally Speaking.

4) These days it’s all about leaving a “zero carbon footprint”. You can’t do that if you’re cutting down trees, printing on them and sucking down tons of ink.

Here are some things you should consider:

* Brush up on your oral communication skills. If you prefer to hide behind text-based email, woe be unto you. But, then again, you can always send an audio email – this is becoming more and more popular.

* If you’re a print designer, learn how to code CSS and customize blogs. Now.

* If you’re a print advertiser, start making plans to digitize and track your ads online – it’s easier this way anyhow. Also, consider how your company can uniquely leverage being an event sponsor.

* Are you a project manager at a print publication? Make sure your job isn’t solely tied to the print portion of your company. If it is start volunteering to take on web-based projects.

* If you’re a printer, start looking into digital distribution.

* If you’re a copywriter for print publications – learn how to write for the web. Now.

* If you’re a writer, develop a system for leveraging your online materials both online and off. Leveraging print materials offline still works effectively – for now.

* If you’re a reader, get used to reading articles online – and for crying outloud learn how to subscribe to RSS feeds!

* Publishers be prepared to go mobile. There’s a reason online music has caught on the way it has. Music is personal. People want their music to be portable. Hence playlists were invented. People already have a playlist for their reading. It’s called and RSS feed. Just wait until more people learn how to really use them. That’s the ticket.

* Publishers should also prepare to go online. With trendy trade pubs like Blogger & Podcaster popping up with easy digital delivery one must remain relevant and competitive.

Some people will still want to savor the feeling of paper between their fingers as they read. There’ll be some die-hard types for sure but, digital is where this train’s headed. All aboard.

Last week Google announced that it is now going to let the people featured IN a news story comment about the story on Google News.

Many journalists – you know who you are – may not be happy to see journalism evolving in this way but I can say that as someone who is often on both sides of the journalism fence, I’m happy to see this web 2.0-based improvement to the way news is consumed. And, it looks like I’m in good company – Paul Gillin thinks the same.

Here’s why I feel this way:

Late last year I was interviewed by a reporter from a very large business publication. Of course, we all were excited that our company would be featured in such a prestigious publication.

In the first five minutes of speaking to the reporter, I knew she knew absolutely zippo about social media and could only cobble together what she had learned from other interviews.

Nevertheless, ready to impress, I gave the best interview of my life – an hour and fifteen minutes of information, URL’s, resources and explanations. Surely, this would get me some good ‘air time’ in the article?  Or, at the very least, a pithy quote?

No such luck. They even fact checked the article before they ran it. All the information they asked me about, I said that I attributed. But absolutely no attribution was given *AND* I was only given a quote about some arcane social media subtopic that seemed as if it were shoved into the article at the last minute! Humph!

We told everyone we would be covered and some people even went out to look for the publication the day it was printed. How embarrassing!

The only reason I haven’t outed the reporter to her editor is because the reporter was referred to me by a very close, respected colleague and I would never do anything to jeopardize that relationship.

I wish I’d had Google News then. Maybe we would have used it, maybe not. But, at least we would have had the opportunity to share our side of the story with anyone who was reading.

Because of this one, horribly wasted experience, we make our own audio recording of all interviews and we definitely plan to use Google News’ new service if this ever happens again.

Would you use the Google News comments to correct a news story about your company?

Note to publications: this is what happens when you send a generic writer to cover a topic that should clearly be assigned to a writer who specializes in the subject matter – as opposed to just lumping everything under ’small business’.