Review of “100 Livestreaming & Digital Media Predictions: Volume 4” by Ross Brand et al.

Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)

100 Livestreaming & Digital Media Predictions: Volume 4 is an eye-opening and captivating collection of technological predictions by Ross Brand and his collaborators! This very well might be the best installment in the series!

From beginning to end, Brand and the esteemed contributors amazed, fascinated, and tantalized us with their discussions about the future of digital media and other technological advancements.

This is going to sound a bit cliché, but we found ourselves engaged throughout this whole book. We were constantly asking ourselves questions like:

“How can we use [insert technology here] to make our lives easier?”

or

“How can [insert technology here] improve the quality, consistency, and efficiency of the things that we do?”

or

“Wouldn't it be cool if [insert technology here] could [insert cool thing here]?”

Admittedly, we're a bit old fashioned and behind on the times. There are still some VHS and cassette tapes in the bins upstairs. If you go digging long enough, you might even find some vinyl!

We still input every entry to our contest manually and send out bills manually like it's 1979 or the Pony Express is still in operation.

Like, have you seen our website? It's just a step up from looking like it was made using an early-2000s Angelfire or Geocities account. Admittedly, that was kinda the point. It was supposed to be a bit plain and rudimentary, following examples set by the likes of IAN (Independent Author Network) and NABE (National Association of Book Entrepreneurs). We're still better though...

Anyway, the point is, we haven't really embraced or learned much about the new technologies that are coming up and propagating like rabbits at spring time.

Embracing these things is one issue, learning about them is another. Failing to learn or being willfully/knowingly ignorant of a subject that's rapidly growing in influence would be a huge mistake on our part. Thankfully, this book is a huge kick in the butt and a reminder for us to get with the times and to familiarize ourselves with what's going on in the tech world.

And remember, technology isn't just computers, software programs, and cyber stuff. Technology is anything that is created to benefit humanity or make human life easier, more efficient, and/or more convenient. That's something we learned from Impossible Dream by Gail Buckley, a book about addressing disorders and disabilities through the use of technology.

In other words, the pen in your hand, the desk you're sitting at, and the chair you're sitting on are just as much examples of technology as any supercomputer in Washington D.C or Silicon Valley.

Technology will exist as long as human beings exist, and until there's an apocalyptic catastrophe of biblical proportions, it's likely going to keep advancing whether we're caught up with it or not.

So why not enlighten ourselves and catch up now?

With all that out of the way, what is it that makes Volume 4 the best and most compelling book in the series? Well, it's because—more than any other edition—it places a heavy emphasis and focus on artificial intelligence (A.I.). Almost every contributor in this book mentions it in some way.

A.I. is the cool new kid on the block. It's the exotic hot girl in town. It's a dream to some and a nightmare to others—the culmination of fears built on media like Terminator and M3GAN. These movies warned us of how A.I. could come back to bite humanity someday, especially if it is ungoverned, unregulated, and allowed to grow and act out of control.

Heck, you could even look at some of the books in this contest and see examples of how A.I. could negatively impact or positively benefit humanity. In Sentience Hazard by Alexandru Czimbor, the “CARLA” A.I. serves as an example of an A.I. that can compute and solve problems faster and more efficiently than normal humans can. However, China's “MegaAI” in that same book is an example of an A.I. that can become tyrannical, self-centered, and threaten to unleash a nuclear genocide.

In Fake Out by Felicia Farber, the protagonists are put in peril as controversies arise from videos and pictures being released of them without their consent, seemingly showing them in immoral and unethical acts. Their freedoms and futures are threatened as they are faced with the prospects of prison and/or being thrown out and rejected from schools. All over some deepfakes that some kid with a TikTok account could make! Imagine that!

John Giovanni Pretto tells us in Ross's book that such deepfakes could potentially play a major and disturbing role in the upcoming 2024 presidential election. Opposing sides (or their supporters) may be able to make deepfake videos vilifying the opposition and showing them in a negative, repugnant light. AI-engineered media may be able to make it sound like they said something they didn't or did something they didn't. The contributor warns that this technology can lead to fake videos, audio clips, and news article, particularly on the internet. This could very well be enough to turn the tide of public opinion for or against a candidate.

That's not even mentioning what influence A.I. could have on which candidates get seen or move up in the algorithm versus which get suppressed or even hidden outright.

But it's not all doom and gloom. Heck, that's part of what makes this book fun: it's mostly positive and forward-thinking. Rather than being fixated on the ways that A.I. might be able to destroy the world with nukes or antimatter someday, the book is actually more focused on individual, specific little things that A.I. can do to help us. The book constantly reminds us that A.I. should be enhancing what you do, not replacing what you do.

It has the potential to help with things like outlining or editing, similar to the way that Grammarly currently works. However, the most tantalizing and exciting thing that A.I. seems to hold the promise of doing is eventually being able to produce media like films, TV shows, and animation cheaply or freely! These are things that would cost an individual or studio in the ballpark of $200-250 million today!

That means that everyone who ever dreamed of making a film, anime, or cartoon someday could eventually be able to do so from the comfort of their own home and with a shoestring budget!

3x Emmy Award winner Jeffrey Fitgerald (called "JeffInHighDef") talked the most about this in the book.

And it's actually quite plausible. Think about it... we've gone from making “home movies” on giant cameras that you had to carry on your shoulder to editing video files from Sony handheld cams on Windows Movie Maker. From there, we've gotten to the point where you can pay $30-100 for a video editing software that allows you to produce surprisingly impressive special effects that would've been movie-quality 30-40 years ago and TV-quality only 20 years ago. That's impressive!

So it's not unprecedented that we could reach a point in which all you have to do is upload a script with some character descriptions, actor names, and you'd get a full-length movie with the click of a button or a tap of your screen!

This actually had us thinking back to Culver City, a novel by Brant Vickers in which the characters get to talk to and interact with actors and actresses from the past including Sir Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Frank Morgan, and Judy Garland! Imagine being able to produce a film starring Sir Laurence Olivier, Judy Garland, Robin Williams, John Wayne, Toshiro Mifune, and Betty White! Yeah, there'd be some ethical issues about whether or not their estates would be owed compensation for their appearance. And, yeah, there'd be the issue of them consenting to appear in a film without being alive to do so. However, just the thought that it could plausibly happen is mind-boggling!

Chetachi A. Egwu, Ph.D said that, because of advancements in this technology, Hollywood is losing its grip—its stranglehold—on digital media and the entertainment industry. What does that mean for the rest of us? Well, it means more opportunities! With power and control less centralized, the rest of us have more leverage and leeway to produce great stuff of our own! There's less of a barrier to entry now that technology has leveled the playing field.

Adams talked about how you could use this same technology to summarize a whole movie or film series! For example, you could ask it to show you the Lord of the Rings in 30 minutes! Imagine that!

Imagine if you could do that with an hour-long biology lecture!
Take that, American education system! Take that, busy work!

Another cool thing that this technology might be able to do is to make movies, films, TV shows, and even video games fully-immersive and real-seeming. For example, you can be IN the world or universe with the other characters in a work of fiction or digital media rather than pressing buttons on a controller or watching passively from a TV screen, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Podcaster Ian Anderson Gray says in this book that even podcasts could be like this! It could be like you're in the studio or room with the streamer or podcaster! Gray even says you might be able to smell them.

And this totally got our minds thinking dirty because you just know that the Twitch & OnlyFans e-girls and their simps are going to abuse the heck out of this technology. In other words, adult content is going to become... well, erm... edgier and more immersive than its ever been (to say the least). Those poor street corner girls are gonna go the way of Tower Records, K-Mart, and the dodo.

Uh, oh! Maybe machines are starting to take all the jobs!

Well, anyway, there were some other great predictions that didn't have to do with A.I.

Perhaps our favorite of these predictions was made by Marisa Cali. She predicted that we would see a rise in “micro-events.” These are smaller, more personal, virtual events. They would be shorter than all-day conventions and smaller (in attendance) than a full seminar or lecture. Here's a true story about how this prediction resonated with us. A lot of us are video game nerds. During the pandemic, all of the conventions were canceled. There would be no meeting voice actors, animators, music composers, and other creators... or so we thought... Virtual cons started popping up which allowed you—the user—to create an avatar and actually tour a digital convention, visiting the different booths and attending scheduled parts of the event as if you were physically there! How cool is that!

Now, quite frankly, the attendance wasn't nearly as great as a physical convention. Furthermore, the experience was a lot less cool than being there in-person and interacting with everyone face-to-face. However, it was a great backup option. It also revealed that the technology existed to make virtual cons possible. It can only get better. Maybe we'll see more like that!

Roger Wakefield made some very interesting predictions about how digital technology and A.I. could make it possible to automatically translate human speech in real-time, almost like the universal translator in Star Trek! Imagine stacking a universal translator on top of virtual conventions! You could have conversations and interactions with people from around the world, no problem!

Anyway, last but not least, we wanted to shout out and talk about some of the book's contributor who were the most familiar to us.

Dale Roberts, a previous Outstanding Creator Awards winner and self-publishing advocate, appears in yet another Ross Brand predictions book! He provides one of the best lines in the book, saying (in regard to A.I.):

“Simply crossing your arms and stomping your feet won’t put the toothpaste back into the tube. Artificial intelligence is the cat that’s been let out of the bag. Either run with it or be left in its wake.”

This actually reminded us of something that was said on the Long Island Breakfast Club Show by a guest named Karen Quinones, the founder of Bridging the Gap in Esports and the author of Confessions of an Esports Mom: “The horse is already out of the barn. It isn't going back in.”

Avoiding A.I. is like clinging to your CD player in an age of music streaming.

Dale Roberts provided ways in which A.I. can help in improving workflow, freeing individuals up to do other things they could be doing.

We also got to hear from Christine Gritmon, the “Let's Talk About Brand” lady who runs her weekly brand chats on Twitter/X. Ironically, she predicted the rapid decline and fall of Twitter and an increase of misinformation on social media.

What a great collection of ideas!

Check it out on Amazon!