I've spotted three things recently that seem to have 'future of media' written all over them. Though that might rather damn them with faint praise. This isn't the future of media like printing ads on bus tickets is future of media. This is future of media like Lost or Battlefront is future of media.
1. The Dongle of Donald Trefusis
(Blimey, my screen needs cleaning doesn't it?)
This is Stephen Fry's (whom God preserve) new venture, The Dongle of Donald Trefusis, described on wikipedia as a "podcast, audio book and radio monologue" though I think that rather undersells them. Because it also seems to be turning into a sort of anti-ARG ARG, with possible online picture clues you're pointed at via the audio (with a stern admonition not to think of them as clues) and a character Twittering from beyond the grave.
Some of the futureness of this is obvious in it's transmedia metaness, sprawling across all sorts of channels. But it's also all futurey because of the creator-centricity of it. It's been put together by someone who understands both the technical and artistic aspects of the thing, and understands natively the particular characteristics of each channel. It's not integrated via status meeting but by a single artistic vision and enthusiasm. And it's not being delivered via a relationship with any traditional media partner, not yet anyway, it's getting out there through pipes like twitter and the iTunes store and on the back of Mr Fry's expertly maintained online clout. He's built himself a channel and now he's distributing through it. V. good.
2. Paul Morley's showing off..
Maggoty Lamb describes Paul Morley's venture last month thusly: the "expansion of his OMM column into an MC Escher-inspired online walking tour around the haunted theme park of Michael Jackson's mythology was a timely and heartening reminder that digital's wide open spaces can be a blank canvas of creative opportunity, as well as a Beachy Head for much-loved music magazines to walk off." And he (or she) is right. It's not that Morley has invented a new form, his expanded column is still made of writing and audio and filmed interviews, and they're without the post-modern trickery some of his old TV shows had, but it's new because he's using the unlimited bandwidth he's got online to explore digressions and footnotes in obsessive detail - not just spending fifty words wondering what Craig David thinks of Michael Jackson but chasing him down and interviewing him for 30 minutes. It's a slight scandal that he's not replacing Lord Bragg of In Our Time as TV Arts Tsar, so he's just turned his Observer column into a self-produced South Bank Show. It's brilliant.
Or, as Mr Warren Ellis says, "That clever bastard Paul Morley may just have reinvented music journalism for the early digital 21C, in partnership with print newspaper The Observer."
3. The Incidental
More reinvention here. The Schulze & Webb & Jones crew are starting to talk about what they do (partly) as 'media design' and The Incidental is a perfect example; blending brochure, guide, map, chat room and pirate maps. What's particularly futurey about it is the gorgeous integration of the digital and the physical. You can read here how it works. And here's Matt explaining it. I love the way it gets past digital infatuation and analogue nostalgia. Digital stuff is used for what it's good for; eradicating time and distance, sharing, all that. Analogue stuff is used for what it can do well; resilience, undestandability, encouraging simple, human contributions. It's properly 'post digital', from a design team and a client who are fluent in the full range of media possibilities. Not just digital, not just print. It integrates media in the same way real people do; knowing what it's like to send a twitter and knowing what it's like to scribble a note on a beermat at 3 in the morning.
What's particularly impressive is the client's willingness to deal with chaos, mess and risk. It's one thing to embrace the messiness of the web when that's the only place it lives - on a screen. It's another thing to commit yourself to printing thousands of copies of 'who knows what', sticking your logo on it and distributing it to your most important audience members. But that's exactly what we/they are going to have to get used to doing.
Anyway.