Welcome to this week’s edition of the Open Book Blog Hop, where a group of authors share their ideas on random topics. This week we’re making predictions about how changes in technology will
affect us as writers.
I’m going to start with one easy prediction, then move on to something that’s more in the out-on-a-limb realm.
Smart watches are the upcoming technology. And they’re useful for many things, like tracking the weather and stock market, but can you imagine reading a book on that little screen? So my prediction is that someone will develop an app that will read the books in your e-book library to you—without needing it to be in an audio book format. And then tie that same technology into Amazon’s Echo Alex speaker system (and similar products.)
Alternatively, there will be a way to project the display onto a wall or whiteboard to make it easier to read. The technology already exists for laptops, so why not for smart watches?
As writers, the new technology may present formatting issues. We’ll need to adapt our existing books into a new setup so the watches can read them correctly, and format our new offerings for yet another market. Same goes for our blogs and websites. As always, the early adapters will get the lion’s share of the initial market.
Now onto a prediction that’s a long shot.
Remember in Star Trek how everyone could talk to everyone (almost) and understand what everyone was saying? Even though they were from different countries and planets and solar systems? The universal translator (that came in various forms in different shows and movies) searched for similar patterns that occur in many spoken languages and, over a series of words, and interpreted them for the hearer.
That translator only works for the spoken word. I predict someone will develop a translator to interpret the written word. Maybe that’s not such a long shot, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that capability already exists in super computer form. But how about in a hand-held device for the masses? Sure, you can go on line and find translations for specific languages, but what about a device that you can run over the page of a book and it will read the text to you in whatever language you select? Think of the possibilities that would open up to us as writers!
We’d immediately have our books available to a world-wide audience without paying for translators for every language. How great would that be? Of course, we’d need to change up our writing style or subject matter to fit more of the international audience. I’m not sure how wolf shifters would translate into a Hindi marketplace. Would readers from all over the world read our blogs if we didn’t write them to include topics of interest to a broad audience? We as writers would have to work a lot harder to make ourselves “attractive” to the new market.
So those are my predictions. What are your predictions? Feel free to share in the comments below. And to find out what other writers on the loop have to say, follow the links below.
Predictions Post – How changes in the industry, in technology or in the tools (social media, blogging, etc.) will affect your ability to earn a living or make your mark as a writer.
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