Moses and the pharmaceutical industry once had exclusive dibs on this word. Nowadays, tablet commonly refers to a specific type of computer doodad technology.
In another cranny of virtual etherland, I stumbled upon a silly jumble of 2013 predictions gathered from social media gurus. A not completely silly one caught my eye:
#3: We’ll See Media as Either Active or Passive
I believe that we will stop seeing media as social and start thinking about our media as being either active or passive. This will happen in two stages.
Stage one is the consumer. When are consumers active or passive with their media? When are they passively watching a TV show or actively taking part on Twitter?
Sounds familiar. From 2007:
Positioning Magazines for Baby Boomers
There are active and passive parts of our day. Without getting into too much psychobabble, as you get older the passive side needs more nourishment. It’s not really passive. It’s focused absorption. At some point you have to climb out of your frenetic digital nest and concentrate on one thing. It might be reading a book, watching a TV show or movie, listening to music, looking out the window.
Or immersing yourself in a magazine.
This isn’t ‘down time’ (that would be sleeping), but nourishing your psyche by absorbing and not actively being involved in what you’re doing.
And there’s the ‘actively taking part on Twitter’ part:
Twitter & Advertising (2012)
… The mobile/social media soothsayers will have you believe that there is this unknown, magical mode of persuasion that has never been thought of before – and will reveal itself any day now.
If you believe that, I have a Blackberry in Brooklyn I want to sell you.
I guess what NostraChuckus really predicts is predict what futurists will predict in five or so years.
Back to tablets and whatnot:
You should stop thinking about the next big thingamabob and whose will be best. In five or ten years there will be all sorts of thingamabobs for just about everything. You’ll have two or three or ten thingamabobs. Tablets/Smartphones will be big, small, thin, simple, complex, active, passive, out the door in your purse or pocket, lost in your couch cushions.
If you’re using a tablet for a passive activity like reading a magazine – the advertisements should be passive, engaging. I’m not sure how they’ll play vs. a print mag – and that’s the big question. But they will have to draw you in viscerally – not with lots of annoying noise:
Digital Distractions
Advertisers are getting wise to the drawbacks of marketing in the digital nest…Digital Distractions II
There are so many digital distractions that it’s difficult to be distracted…
That social media guru is on the right track. He simply needs to read some of these:
