GRAVITY SEVEN -- Tuesday, September 22, 1992

We humans have got a lot of ways to talk to each other. If you narrow the mediums of expression to just those that convey words and pictures, and ignore for a moment sound, touch, taste, and smell, you've got quite a range of methods for hearing and being heard.

I guess the most immediate is the Post-It note, which had its origins
quite a long time ago in some scribbled scrap of paper:

"Jorge, clean chickens yard."

Notes like the one you're reading account for an immense verbal barrage, a never ending textual burden for those of us gifted with the ability to make sense of symbols (yes there are still illiterate people, nearby even).

Anyone blessed to work in even a mildly bureaucratic organization is well aware of the trash-heap mountains dedicated to memo-rializing every mental whim of every person in every job. ThoughtShops will help this situation.

ThoughtShops are an enhancement of something that already exists and is now running rampant throughout the land . . . the electronic forum.

Some of you have never used CompuServe, or BIX, or GEnie, or the
Source, or Bitnet, or Usenet, or private bulletin-board systems. All of
you have at least used electronic mail (as you're reading this) and
probably have an understanding of the INFO topics on the Lehigh network.

And we've all been the route with books, magazines, newspapers, trade journals, cereal boxes, billboards, "Missing" mailings, and skywritten proposals of marriage. If I'm sounding obvious, it's because I'm trying to bring out something quite basic. Textual communication surrounds us.

"Yeah, yeah. So what?"

Well what if it talked back.

"Come again?"

What if the medium itself took on a more involved role. What if the
magazine you're sending off your prized piece of prose to dealt with you directly. What if the magazine dealt with you directly. Not the editors, but the medium itself.

ThoughtShops are smart magazines. They're active information franchises.

Tomorrow: self-publishing.