Four authoritative visions for future image technology

At the Seybold 2001 conference in Boston in April, due to the absence of Apple, this year's opening ceremony was somewhat different. Unlike the customary report from the Mac world in previous years, the special theme of this year's conference was extremely interesting.

The main purpose of one of the meetings was “Publishing Industry, 20 Years of Outlook”, which was a panel discussion for the conference, representing Mark Getty, executive chairman and co-founder of Getty Images, and Michael Michael, head of Xerox PARC. Paige, Thad Mcllroy, President of Areadia Press, and Rick Smolan, Founder of Against All Ddds. The four delegates not only stated their views on the development of the publishing industry in the next 20 years, but also expressed what they most want to happen in the future and what they fear most.

Getty's speech first reviewed the tremendous changes that have taken place in the past 30 years. In particular, he pointed out that on July 21, 1969, when he lived in a small village in Italy, there was only a television set in the entire village. This night all the people in the village gathered in the chapel in the village to watch humans. The first televised broadcast on the moon. ("All people" does not include women, and women are not allowed to enter church at that time, indicating that the change in the status of women is also one of the biggest changes in the past 30 years).

Getty hopes that in the next 20 years, the world will make another leap forward, and human beings will be able to develop a new software that can translate the language of one country into the language of another country in real time, so as to better promote the understanding of all human beings. With consensus. What concerns Getty's most concern is the ethical issues that arise with the advancement of science and technology. For example, if biotechnology can solve the aging problem of human beings, then who should decide who can extend their life? How should this service be? Fees, will humans use it to create "elite elites"?

It is a pity that for Getty's doubts about the development of science and technology, the conclusion of the group discussion was to develop a new super robot to make a fate choice for human beings. This almost absurd topic has obviously gone far beyond the theme of the conference.

Thad Mcllroy, the self-professed miser, quoted Microsoft's Dick Brass as saying the previous day: "The Internet will become a disaster for publishing. The commercial model does not work in the publishing industry." Mcllroy countered this view. He thinks the network Publication did not fail. On the contrary, the Internet was a good thing for the publishing industry. Mcllroy's greatest hope for the future is that the current education system has been broken and it has attracted more technical education requirements. Mcllroy is most afraid of the media everywhere, when everyone can become a publisher, and even everyone can produce products such as desktop video.

Michael Paig of Xerox PARC emphasized the development of technology—especially the technology developed by PARC—to help people absorb various cultures. Culture is not just reading. Paige exemplifies his son, who is a child with dyslexia, who has difficulty reading but has strong computer literacy skills. Paige is worried about advanced but suffocating productivity brought about by technological advancement. The entire publishing and content production are technical and stylized. Although there will be no technical mistakes, they will lose their souls.

At the end of Rick Smolan’s speech, Smolan hopes to have an intelligent hotel room. Once he enters the room, the room will know who he is and provide him with specialized intelligent services, such as the computer automatically accesses his folder. Automatically switch to his son's photo and more. Although Smolan's idea sounds impractical, Smolan pointed out that this is indeed a very good idea. He took his favorite Amazon.com as an example, the company has a good grasp of the user's various information, including all previous Consumer records, each time it visits, it knows who the user is and makes recommendations for it.

Smolan’s hope for the future also involves education issues. He hopes that technological progress will teach people how to ask questions and learn more professionally to search for information. Smolan emphasizes that today’s knowledge is changing day by day. Knowing how to find information is more important than learning information. What Smolan is afraid of is the negative effect of technology-driven personalized information services. People can only get the information they want and often pass over more useful information.

Also a recognition of past performance, driven by Xerox, John Seybold was awarded the Isaiah Thomas Award from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Seybold is not only the founder of the Seybold Publishing and Seybold Research Society, but also ROCAPPI (printing and publishing industry computer Applied Researcher) Founder of the company that developed the first commercial typesetting computer program. The past winners of the Isaiah Thomas Prize were Allen Neuharth, Gannet's and today’s United States’ principal regulator and President; Katharine Graham, Chairman of the Washington Post Company; and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Chairman and CEO of New York Times Company.

In addition, there will be a special web publishing topic at this Seybold research meeting that will discuss why internet companies have closed down after the peak period and their impact on online publishing.