USA Today Validates Our Prediction about Space & Space Junk

Back on January 15, we published our "Additional Set of Predictions for 2020: A Baker's Dozen of Tech Trends," in which we said: 

"There will be a lot of media space allocated to covering outer space...Meanwhile we also expect coverage about political and legal issues of space as well as articles about things that just a few years ago would have flown under the radar (we've really been trying not to make space puns) such as the growing awareness that too many satellites are causing a traffic jam in space. This space jam began to get recognition as a potential problem in space in 2019 but we think it will get more recognition in 2020. The risk of collisions among satellites is a problem."

On Jan. 28, USA Today wrote: "Heads up: Two satellites might collide in space 559 miles above Pittsburgh."

By NASA JPL - http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/galleryspacecraft/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33645603

Update: Since we first published this blog, The Atlantic published an article, "The Night Sky Will Never Be the Same: Elon Musk’s plan for worldwide internet has sent bright artificial, lights streaking through the dark" that also validates our prediction. The Atlantic looks at Starlink, described as "a floating scaffold" that Musk "hopes will someday provide high-speed internet to every part of the world." The problem: 

"These satellites have turned out to be far more reflective than anyone, even SpaceX engineers, expected. Before Starlink, there were about 200 objects in orbit around Earth that could be seen with the unaided eye. In less than a year, SpaceX has added another 240. 'These are brighter than probably 99 percent of existing objects in Earth orbit right now,' says Pat Seitzer, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan who studies orbital debris."

You might say, so big deal about this prediction? What can we do about this problem. We think it's interesting for several reasons:

1. This was a topic that was mostly ignored a few years ago. In Feb. 1, 2017, Popular Science published an article about space junk, "If Earth's orbit is so crowded, why don't we see space junk in photos of the Earth?" The article acknowledge a problem with space junk but not the aspect of collisions, and that was just three years ago.
2. There seems to be more interest in space (and not because of the U.S. Space Force). Awareness of space junk is probably a good thing. What we really need is a solution. There could be a business in decluttering old, useless satellites still in orbit.
3. From a media perspective, one article may reinforce another reporter filing another story. This is how media bandwagons start, and it may encourage governments and businesses to find a way to remove space junk.

The Atlantic Validates Our Prediction: Social Media May Make Us Lonelier

In this year's edition of our annual predictions of top media stories, one of our prediction was: "We may be immersed in social media, but we’ll spend less time with actual people."


Back in Jan., we wrote, "So many people use social media sites – from Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn, to and more -- that people have less time to spend with their friends and family. We’re not sure if this will get much media coverage..."

Well The Atlantic Monthly has validated our prediction in its May 2012 issue. It's article, "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" makes the point that: "Social media—from Facebook to Twitter—have made us more densely networked than ever. Yet for all this connectivity, new research suggests that we have never been lonelier (or more narcissistic)—and that this loneliness is making us mentally and physically ill." Written by Stephen Marche, a novelist who writes a monthly column for Esquire, the article reports on "what the epidemic of loneliness is doing to our souls and our society."

It's well worth reading.

And today's Boston Globe validated our prediction that "The desire to be connected 24/7 may change in 2012." Op-ed columnist Joanna Weiss wrote, "Giving screens -- and ago -- a week off," in favor of unplugging from 24/7 and a Screen Free-Week. Check that out, too.

Late-in-the-Day Update: Just got around to reading Jane E. Brody's column in today's Times.  She's a must-read health columnist, and her current column, "Making Progress Against Clutter," went beyond thinking of clutter as physical objects.  She spent about half the column talking about how much she enjoyed a recent trip to Antarctica because she and her two sons did not spend hours monitoring email and world news.  Instead,

We read books and missed not one excursion, lecture, vista or conversation with an interesting shipmate.

As I watched others buried in their iPads, laptops and smartphones, I wondered what people did on vacation before we had this plethora of electronic equipment keeping us “in touch” 24/7. Perhaps they telephoned now and then to see how the dog was faring.

Not knowing about problems back home or at work surely meant vacations were more relaxing, a real break from daily stress.

 Makes a pretty strong case for unplugging.

What's Wrong with Newspapers?

In the June issue of The Atlantic, James Fallows writes an interesting essay, 'How to Save the News," which starts at an unexpected place: Google.

Noting that people assume that Google is one of the reasons newspapers are suffering, Fallows makes the point that Google is actually trying to help save newspapers, based on the premise that people are searching for compelling content, and that if they don't have interesting content -- like that from newspapers -- they won't need search engines.

What I think is interesting is a point I've made before but one that's validated by Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO (and a former client, when he was CEO of Novell):

"I observe that as print circulation falls, the growth of the online audience is dramatic. Newspapers don't have a demand problem; they have a business model problem."

Google's perspective, Fallows reports, is that people will of course pay for online content, even if they haven't done so up until now. The key is to find the right subscription solution for each publication -- it may not be the same answer for every paper.

Sign of the Times: Reader's Digest Files Chapter 11

The once immensely popular Reader's Digest has announced it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. While its flagship magazine was once ubiquitous on checkout lines and in doctors' offices, it's been harder to find lately. As I read the news, "Reader’s Digest Plans Chapter 11 Filing," it occurred to me that I don't remember seeing the Digest during recent doctors visits, and I can remember seeing other magazine covers while standing on checkout lines, but I don't remember seeing Digest lately.

I'm not entirely surprised because the sort of condensed content that was the essence of Reader's Digest is now easily available online. In fact, unlike long-form journalism like The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, whose articles can be too long to read on a computer screen, the Reader's Digest format is ideal for the online age.

I think the only surprising thing is that Reader's Digest, which always condensed bestsellers, reached chapter 11. I would've thought it might have been able to condense the bankruptcy filings to Chapter 7.

When No News is Bad News: The Atlantic Monthly on why we need serious journalism

According to the introduction to an article by James Warren, "When No News Is Bad News,"is an look by a former managing editor of The Chicago Tribune into "the collapse of the newspaper industry" in which Warren "tries, mostly in vain, to find hope for the future of journalism."

With an introduction like that, you basically know what Warren, a contributor to the Huffington Post, will say. After all, the article is based on a speech he made, “Democracy, the decline of Mainistream Media and Rise of the Internet” at the University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy.

So here's his point: good democracies require good journalism.

Or in his words:

The question is, how much light can you have if you aren’t willing to pay to look into military hospitals in Washington, into those on Death Row in Illinois, into whether those wooden Thomas the Tank Engine toys made in China are safe, into the safety of school lunch programs, into whether people needlessly die on airplanes, or even just into whether there are obvious conflicts of interest on the local zoning board?

And lastly, we have to be brutally honest with a final, crucial question: Even in our democracy, are there enough people out there who care whether the light of serious journalism is allowed to fail?

I don't have an answer to that. I know demand for journalism continues even as traditional newspapers are collapsing. There are now nonprofits working in several markets trying to offer serious journalism, trying to serve as a monitor to their municipal governments.

The question for them: can they sustain their operations? Will they be able to find readers?

Ultimately, there's a question of the marketplace: Will people pay to support good journalism?

Why Andrew Sullivan Blogs: Interesting Article in The Atlantic

Andrew Sullivan wrote an interesting long article about blogging. "Why I Blog" is worth checking out.