Looking ahead down the technology timeline, VRM visionary Doc Searls has some prophesies for what's to come. Here are just a few of them:

Websites will become as inadequate as transmitters. That is, both will remain necessary but insufficient means for reaching listeners and viewers, and for relating to them. "Live Web" methods such as streaming, file sharing, social networking and "rivers of news" will all play roles as well.

Brands and reputations will matter more than ever. What will matter most about those names and reputations, however, will not be limited to their familiarity. Instead they will be enriched or impoverished by the degrees to which they participate in a marketplace sustained by real relationships.

VRM will reform CRM. Once we have tools that that will allow any of us voluntarily to pay for music and everything else we call "media" — and beyond that to relate with suppliers on terms that work for us as well as for them — CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems will cease to be one-way marketing vehicles and start to become two-way means by which real relationships between individuals and institutions are supported.

He has seven more.

(hat tip: Steve Mays)