Wired's Chris Anderson Believes He Has Seen the Future--and It's Tablets

(MoneyWatch)  As we've already documented here at BNET, Apple iPad (and tablet) fever is sweeping the magazine industry, sometimes, I think, despite lapses in logic that may keep it from being the print savior some see it as.

But not everyone agrees with me. On that note, it was worth hearing what Wired editor-in-chief (and "long tail" theorist) Chris Anderson had to say about digital tablets at this week's "Transformation" conference sponsored by the American Association of Advertising Agencies. In his speech (partially excerpted in shaky-cam video above), Anderson tells why he and his staff are drinking this particular variant of digital Kool-Aid -- and are currently in an aggressive prototyping push. Among other things, he predicts the rampant adoption of tablets will happen in less than ten years. Some other points:

• Anderson believes the time is right for tablets because so much of our data is now stored in the cloud instead of on a hard drive. We don't need to carry around laptops. This helps create the market for "a light, long battery life" device that holds other content.
• In Wired's current prototyping process for tablets, he's finding it's now possible for print and digital to be designed by the same team, which hasn't been the case on the Web, where his staff has done "the best they can within the restraints of Web browsers." If the web has been "mag-minus", he sees the tablet, which offers a more immersive experience as "mag-plus."
• The "mag-plus" idea also extends, for Anderson, to advertising, since it will finally combine the best of print advertising with the best of digital. It can be the full-screen experience that print allows, but adds in the trackability of digital media. On a tablet, he says, an ad is "not relegated to the margins, it's going to have that full-screen experience."
• Tablets will expand the print market to what he dubbed "the Google generation" by bringing them "this deep, rich content in digital form."

You may have noticed that there's one word conspicuously missing from the excerpts above, and for the most part, from Anderson's speech: iPad. Even though Wired, and four other Conde Nast magazines, are currently developing iPad versions, that's probably not a coincidence; one thing the magazine (and consequentially, the advertising) industry has to figure out is what tablets they are going to support, as not all will be created equal, or the same. Best not to overemphasize the iPad yet, when the tablet platform wars have barely started.

Yes, there are reasons to have at least some skepticism that the iPad will win; for one thing, it doesn't support Adobe's Flash. Though there are potential work-arounds for that, it puts already cash-strapped advertisers and publishers in a quandary. Since much of their Web content is Flash-based, they may not want to re-invent the wheel for the iPad.

Also unaddressed in the excerpt above is whether people will find tablet-based magazines so compelling that they'll pay for them. Anderson does mention this in the Wired tablet demo video embedded below, though even he's not certain about it. The proof, I guess, will be in the coding.

Previous coverage of tablets at BNET Media:

• Memo to Magazines: Your iPad Strategy Can't Work
• Apple iPad Proves Most Hilarious Gadget of the Century
• AP May Charge For Content on Apple's iPad
• Apple iPad's Jump Start for Media Digital Revenues
• No Adobe Flash: A True, Sad Tale of What It Might Be Like to Own iPad