I was perusing a theatre review the other morning in which several members of the cast were complimented by name. My first thought was “Who are those actors? Have I seen them in anything before?”
I could have looked them up on the web, but that would have taken just a little more effort than I had time for at that point in my morning routine.
I then realized that if I had been equipped with some sort of wearable — perhaps some everyday descendent of Google Glass a few years from now — then I could simply have used some sort of quick hand/finger gesture to highlight the name of any actor on the page, and the image of that actor, together with a brief bio, would have shown up in front of my eyes. No fuss, no muss.
Then it struck me — I was still thinking in terms of paper. Such a twentieth century mindset I have!
In a few short years, the whole notion of reading the news on actual printed paper may become as extinct as listening to an Edison cylinder.