When I was young, I used to spend all day long sitting under an old banyan and reading. Most of the books I read are fairy story and fictions. They always dazzled me. Years later, I started to realize that many of what was taken for magics in these books has now become part of our lives. No wonder there is a saying: "Magic is the unrealized new technology".

Media is this kind of technology. And it keeps updating in a magic speed.

1000 years——it is the time we spend from oral media to paper ones.

300 years——it is the time we spend from paper media to radio.

50years——it is the time we spend from radio to TV.

20 years——it is the time we spend from TV to the internet.

What's next? And when will it appear?

Nobody knows it for sure. But everybody knows clearly that it will definitely come——in the near future.

And when it comes, it will change the world.

Future media is not going to do its debut with a glamorous and shocking move. It comes close to you gradually, and change the way you look at the world even before you could recognize its existence.

Media is a magic thing. Think about it, how many people have ever been to every place they know? Hardly a single one. But everyone can speak one sentence or two about these places. How come? That's the magic of media. But now, mostly we get the materials of building our world passively. Most time we are told what something is like. But is it really like what we have been told? We have no way to testify if there is no new technology to help. Luckily, newly designed media springs out one after another. A little improvement for each time, future media is on its way to coming.

Future media might come in many shapes, but will share the following characters.

User-friendly. Firstly, Most users use new media because they believe it can bring them what they want effectively. Therefore, once new media breaks their prospect, it will easily lose them and hard to get them back. Secondly, new internet is meant to benefit humans. As the user population is soaring, different classes blend in, including some who know little about media. In order to do their good, new media designers should consider that how they can get easy access to these new media.

Bar-freely. The gaint world is turning into a little county where people can talk to others freely. But now we have many limits, technically, politically, and economically. If there comes one day that new media can be used by anyone in any place on the earth equally, then it can be said that future media is founded.

If I can live to this day, I will ask my granddaughter to sit with me under a banyan. I'll read to her the fairy stories and fictions her grandma once read. I'll tell her what a magic period she is in, and how the "future media" has once been a Utopia in my life.

(By Cheng Xiangxin Editor: Cui Xuyan)