How Will We Read Magazines?

We are running an on-line poll on the way that magazines are to be read 10 years from now.

If this is an issue on which you have views, go and cast your vote. Remember we are not asking how magazines will be read next year, or in 2012, but in 2020! These are the choices:

• In print on paper delivered via physical distribution
• In print on paper delivered by home printer device
• On a tablet (something like the iPad)
• On an e-ink device (something like the Kindle but with colour)
• On a mobile phone (something like the iPhone/Blackberry)
• From an image projected to a surface by a mobile phone (or something like that)
• On a personal computer (the equivalent of today's PC or Notebook)
• On a TV-type of home entertainment system
• On silicon brain inplants
• On heads-up interactive goggles
• On a device or medium unlike any of the others in this list

Oh yes, there is an incentive for completing the poll: you will be able to see how the votes of others have been cast (totals only -- this is an anonymous poll), and you will be able to come back in and check the results again later. But we will also blog about the result here next week.

One reason we decided to construct this poll: at Exact Editions we are running a round-table discussion for 50/60 leaders and key decision-takers in the magazine business, the round-table to be held at The British Library, on December 1st. The focus of the discussion is very much on the promise and potential from current digital technologies (our theme is "Bringing it all together: iPads, Online and Magazines in print"), and in preparing our themes and thoughts for this event we thought it would be useful to consult the wisdom of crowds on the imponderables and the various sea changes which confront the industry.

Although it is very hard to be right about this kind of issue, it is of fundamental importance to the industry and its decision takers. Which is one reason why the magazine business has shown so much interest in the potential and performance of the iPad as a magazine reading device.