To kick it off, Michael Zimbalist, vice president for research and development operations at The New York Times Company, reflects on how he and his staff recognize new technologies that will have an effect on how people consume news. The New York Times Company’s research and development department tries to predict the kinds of products and services that will be used two or three years from now. One way we do this is to look for what futurists call “weak signals” — those early signs of change, faintly visible today, whose presence may foretell bigger things to come. While weak signals are never the headliners themselves, they may often be found embedded in larger stories, lurking near the edges, like ultraviolet radiation encroaching on the visible spectrum.
