The hardware list is what I purchased about every 10 years. After my first computer, the next leap was to the NOOK, on the 10 year schedule. What will I buy in 2022?

But I do believe that by mastering social media, even as it changes, publishing houses, agents and authors will serve themselves, and will serve stories with universal truths, timeless human foibles and with the virtues, strengths, weaknesses, of language in all its elegant or tawdry possibilities.

The grand human desire to “story telling” will not go away regardless of the cave wall or electronic nano-beam.

Yes – this is some kind of Golden Age – an age of abundance for story tellers. How will money be made? Of Course by selling. That is the only way money has ever been made [discounting thievery]. But how to sell? Isn’t that the real question?

I don’t know. But since retirement, I have studied digital journalism, social media and now social media marketing. My optimistic thought is that there must be a ‘pony’ under all those tweets, posts, and videos.

Here’s a rundown of the hardware that has changed during my 50 years of writing:

1962 – office standard typewriter
1972 – portable electric typewriter
1982 – dedicated word processor and printer [floppy disks]
1992 – laptop, IBM with DOS based operating system
2002 – Dell desktop, windows operating system
2003 – SONY desktop and a SONY notebook with a camera and a wireless chip
2009 – HP desktop, windows 7
2012 – NOOK+ tablet

The hardware changed, but isn’t it the distribution and selling channels that have altered the publishing landscape?

People still write books and people still read books. Now books can be distributed electronically. Books can be purchased electronically. Is this something like the way ‘canned food’ was to ‘farmer’s markets’ before the civil war? When I was a child, eggs, milk, morning papers, bread and ice were delivered to my grandmother’s house [the iceman drove a horse drawn wagon].

As for what publishers will do in the short term or long term? Maybe find an electronically method of delivery?

“It used to be one book review at a time.” And it still is. But there are more reviews in the marketplace. And more eyes than TIME ever had. Maybe the differences is in the ‘targeting?’

The marketplace is not the “appointment TV” of the past where an advertiser could place an ad knowing the size of an audience and the predictably of that audience [2 million viewers sit down at 8 p.m. every Wednesday to watch “The ____ Show.” And, also knowing the selling power of the commercial.

One thing the 2012 presidential election demonstrated is that TV commercials, direct snail-mail, speeches, money, and the rest do not have the power they had in the past. Obama’s campaign organized via social media, [the message], to volunteers whose behavior was predictable [they had already agreed to pay attention to the message], and the volunteers took action [the transaction or ‘sell’ or ‘purchase’].

The internet is an echo chamber but maybe the unknown factor is where the customer is in relationship to the echo?

But, its also true that an entertaining offering might find a worldwide audience – eg., Gangnam Style

OK – enough of this….I send it into the echo chamber –