Writing became a useful activity (say, back in the days of the Egyptians) because it was both relatively PORTABLE and PERMANENT, meaning you could write something down — (like the number of stacks of wheat you just harvested) and it would be there a year later (like when you took your records to Pharaoh’s tax collectors.)

Now with text, audio, video, and still images so readily available to us, we are no longer tied to text as a portable and permanent means of expressing our thoughts. An iPhone is easily as portable as a piece of papyrus, and I foresee this webisphere-based culture manipulating the strengths of each mode of communication and weaving them together to create a hybrid language — a language that right now we can barely imagine.

Whatever form this new communication ultimately takes — it is changing so quickly that I’m sure I’ll be able to watch the evolution occur before my eyes — and I am delighted to be here at this time to watch the show. As, I’m sure, are you.

One example: Apple is going to introduce a tablet (my guess) in the next 6 months(ish) and it will be all about video. This will change how we consume video – not just entertainment video. This will, in turn, spill over into the business world (and not only with more ads).The web, your tv, your mobile phone, your tablet will all be linked to the same new content and that content (very soon) will be predominently video.

I remember the clear distinction of the ‘lean forward’ or ‘lean back’ types of content consumption we all thought we understood only 10 years ago. Watch a 13 year old on a computer – they lean both ways at the same time… and mobile video consumption is another thing altogether.

Businesses will have to create really valuable content – most of it video, to stay in the game. Ultimately quality will be critical – not in the sense of slick production but quality in the sense of content that communicates effectively, is trusted, is well done (we might bicker over what’well done’ means…) and that provides real value.

I can be more clear by looking at TV’s history. You rightly place TV’s roots in radio, and to this day TV shows are designed so most of the storytelling’s in the audio. Yet TV was in its way a reaction to the cinema, the dominant, larger-than-life storytelling of the time. And the way people watched movies at theaters in the 50s differs categorically from how they watch them now, on laptops, HDTVs or iPhones.

I think Internet video watching’s the same. It’s not about interactivity– it is about user control. Your video’s just one option among the 15 tabs they’ve got open in Firefox. And there’s something more personal and homey about Internet video that belies production value. I agree again that a lot of businesses are getting left behind as video marketing changes, but I’m not sure we think it’s going in the same direction.