Category: Future News

Sept. 1, 2013
LOS ANGELES–Three short years after its controversial decision to stop selling albums and to focus exclusively on the marketing of licensed packaging, Sony Music reports that revenues from the sale of liner notes and associated packaging exceed those generated by sale of its music catalog. “At the time, the heads of all the Majors thought that we were crazy,” explains Sony A & R Chief Herb Iki. “But it was just that they refused to see the way in which the industry was developing. We realized pretty quickly that music, because it’s really just bits, was destined to be free; but packaging, that’s something we know about, and something we can sell.”

Sony launched its “albumless” strategy with the widely publicized release of “Nobitz,” the 33rd album from classic-rock stalwarts U2. At the time, fans lining up to purchase the disc were almost universally shocked to discover that “Nobitz” consisted entirely of brightly-colored cardboard and plastic packaging, with a stylish, burlap circle in the place of a disc. “We learned a lot from the ‘Nobitz’ launch,” recalls Iki. “First, we learned that it’s better to keep the packaging empty than to try to replace the disc with something. I don’t know how many people tried to play that burlap ‘disc,’ but I think every one of them called to complain that theirs was defective. Second, we learned that, overwhelmingly, fans will pay for the packaging, even when they can download the music for free.”

Three years later, Sony Music sales confirm that a business many thought destined for extinction merely needed to be re-thought. “I’ve raised my estimates on all the major music companies, largely because they’ve managed to redefine their markets,” notes JupiterScan analyst Helva Vexner. “For a while it looked like the labels were in serious trouble. Artists didn’t need their distributional networks in order to get product out there. But now, after Sony’s success, artists are re-signing in droves to get the licensing revenues from the packaging.”

“Historically, artists relied upon labels for distribution and promotion while labels depended upon artists to supply the product” explains OVA super-agent Maxim Maxim. “The labels finally realized that, in the packaging, they were supplying a product worth money in its own right. Every serious fan craves the iconic connection that’s possible only through a physical product. I have, systematically, encouraged all of my artists to sign licensing deals.”

The viability of Sony’s new strategy, however, remains uncertain. New printing technologies, in concert with a peer-to-peer file distribution system known as Packster, threaten the newfound stream of “Paper & Plastic” or “P&P” revenues. Recent improvements in Materials Printers from Compackard have enabled fans to produce, in their homes, packaging nearly identical in quality to that offered by Sony and other traditional record companies. With a Materials Printer, a block of resin “toner,” and a file describing the desired packaging, users can make for themselves the products companies like Sony are coming to rely on.

Sony’s Iki remains sanguine. “Packster is just another in a series of technologies that have challenged the way we do business. But that’s a good thing. It makes us evolve and innovate, forces us to realize value in ways we didn’t previously think possible. It’s true that we are in the marketing business, not the music business. But that’s why we make money. People will buy marketing. They won’t always buy music.”

Feb. 23, 2056
WASHINGTON DC–For the first time since the controversial practice of home-jailing was introduced some 15 years ago, the number of American households electing to house a convicted felon has surpassed the number choosing to home-school their children. U.S. Bureau of Prisons officials point to the numbers and declare home-jailing initiatives an unqualified success. Detractors, including a broad coalition of current and former prisoners, civil-rights activists and members of the threatened Prison Guards of America and U.S. Prison Workers unions, continue to protest the program even as it moves into its 16th and what may be its most profitable year.

“We simply applied the principles of network decentralization to what appeared to be an insoluble problem,” explained Bureau Chief Madeline Fender. “We needed more and more prison space, but at a certain point, the marginal costs of adding a new cell to these huge complexes simply outweighed what it cost society to leave felons on the street. That’s the economic reality, but the political reality was that we couldn’t let these people out; so we came up with a novel solution which turned our liabilities into assets.”

Bureau officials quickly discovered a healthy demand for prisoners once the private sector stepped forward with fairly low-cost jailing facilities that could be installed in a small spare-room or walk-in closet using simple household tools. In fact, officials point to the phenomenal economic success of companies serving home-jailers as a beneficial collateral effect of the program. “Not only did we keep felons off the street and satisfy the desires of many Americans to take responsibility for some of the less fortunate among us, but we also started an entirely new industry that’s growing by leaps and bounds.”

Critics of the program typically point to the more outrageous of the products offered to home-jailers, including some of the colorful outfits and hats sold for home-prisoners. “It’s just not appropriate to allow these sorts of dress-up activities,” declares a prominent coalition spokesman. “I mean, look at these outfits: PonyZilla, My Little Walrus. These are kids shows; these costumes are being marketed to kids. There’s no reason that a grown person, felon or not, should be treated like a dress-up doll by the kids just because Mommy and Daddy have a home-prisoner.”

Social scientists disagree about the reasons for the popularity of home-jailing. While most dismiss Prison Bureau claims that home-jailers are motivated by a desire to fulfill their civic responsibilities, few can agree on what leads people to want to take a prisoner into their homes. Columbia sociologist M. Leigh Jamish points to a social void in contemporary life that home-jailing does something to fill: “The past sixty or seventy years have seen a fairly quick and widespread homogenization of world cultures. Only a few generations ago, it was fairly easy to visit a place, or encounter a person who differed from you. Now, it’s not so easy. And home-jailing seems, to me, to be a way for families to experience a proxy for that kind of social and cultural difference, but in an environment over which they have total control.”

Incidents of abuse and escape have been fewer than even optimistic officials expected. That may in part be due to the pre-screening most home-jailers must pass before taking custody of prisoners. “Not only do we make sure that these people have the means and equipment to support a prisoner, but we also offer in-depth training programs, including thorough courses on how to effectively use restraints, how to prepare the ‘prison food’ that the prisoners expect, and how to set up a system of rewards, privileges, and punishments to maintain prisoner discipline,” explains Monty Frost, director of Home-Jailers’ Education at the Prison Bureau. “We’re proud of the preparation we provide. They leave here with everything they need to keep a secure, healthy, and compliant felon in their homes.”

Jan. 2, 2045
WASHINGTON DC–Officials at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, a division of the Department of Commerce responsible for calculating Gross Domestic Product, a measure of economic activity, recently decided to include the value of all property crimes in the important measurement. Minutes of December meetings among executive officials reveal that key members of the Bureau had reached a broad consensus on the inclusion of the figures, which are quite high and, after revision of calculations of GDP for past years, reveal a staggering growth rate in the past 40 years.

Harvard economics professor W. Earnest Peak explained at a recent advisors meeting that “property crime-chiefly theft, but also graft, bribery, and embezzlement-should be viewed as services akin to those offered by professionals in the legal, medical, and psychotherapeutic industries.”

It seems that property crime, when calculated as a component of GDP, offers a particularly great boost because the service involved, while fairly risky to practitioners, has a particularly high rate of return, dwarfing even the fat margins enjoyed by software conglomerates. Property crime, as an industry, also enjoys a low barrier-to-entry. Though not everyone can easily engage in high-level political graft, the average, young entrepreneur can begin snatching purses, and executing home invasion burglaries with a nearly insignificant initial capital outlay.

While the inclusion of property crime values in revised calculations of historical GDP has shown a much greater rate of growth over recent decades than was previously thought, it has also radically altered views of historic, non-inflationary growth during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The widely venerated leadership of long-time U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is cast in a different light.

While economists have historically credited Chairman Greenspan with facilitating a sustainable, non-inflationary growth rate significantly higher than was thought conventionally possible, they now recognize that the concurrent and precipitous decline in property crime rates was what permitted the apparently impossibly high growth rates. “What we thought was very high growth was actually, in context, pretty tame,” noted a Commerce Department spokesman. ” Inflation was kept under control because of the collapse of the crime industry nation-wide.”

No administration official will go on the record calling for an increase in theft to stimulate the economy, but most acknowledge privately that they are doing what they can to ensure that graft and bribery rates remain high. Barring a groundswell in grassroots shoplifting and petty theft, however, the activities of a few officials can do little by themselves to resuscitate the economy. “Let’s hope for a good Christmas season; there’s always lots to steal around the holidays,” offered an unnamed Commerce attorney participating in the decision.

Sept. 1, 2000
NEW HAVEN–Futurefeedforward, a young start-up company in southern Connecticut, publicly announced today that it has established a computer networking link to the future. The company’s Temporal Networking technology enables it to directly gather information about the future from databases located in the future and linked to present day computers in its New Haven offices. The company reports that by eventually building extensive databases in the future containing information about events between now and the future, and by networking “ForwardServers” with “present-side clients,” it has gained unprecedented access to information about the future.

“The commercial possibilities are literally endless,” notes a company spokesperson. “One simple example: Marketers can improve the effectiveness of advertising campaigns by targeting only those consumers who will eventually buy what they’re selling.”

Although the exact nature of the technology remains a secret, company materials claim that information can be encoded in “wave packets” traveling back in time on “retrograde quantum effects.” A present-day “black box” device collects and decodes these packets, producing usable, present-day information about future events.

Company founder Redroe “Red” Boudaine invented the technology and established the company to develop and exploit its commercial possibilities.

The company currently offers financial and research services to the industrial, commercial, and consumer markets.

Its research division, predictably, touts its ability to produce unequalled and unequallable analyses of future trends; but its financial services division aims to profit by selling money below its current value. “Money wants to be free!” declares CEO Boudaine.

Prominent banking officials doubt the viability of a business which sells money below cost. “If I sell you $1 million for, say, $900,000, that’s just not a business, that’s a bankruptcy waiting to happen,” noted a Federal Reserve spokeswoman.

Boudaine remains undaunted: “It’s not that banking officials are behind-the-times; it’s just that we are ahead, looking decades, centuries, even millennia into the future. They may refuse to accept our vision now, but, eventually, we will own them, all of them.”

The company’s web-presence at futurefeedforward.com regularly publishes news about future events in an attempt to “spread the word about the company” and to “build our brand.”