Clicking on any Name

 https://myblogepage.blogspot.com/2016/03/next-generation-newspaper.html

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Reading the blog post first, then checking each prediction against what exists today.

I read your March 2016 post. Here’s how its main ideas look ten years later.

1. Foldable, paper-thin screens instead of newsprint. This is mostly here. Foldable phones are common, rollable laptops and colour e-paper tablets have shipped, and flexible OLED is a mature technology. What doesn’t exist yet is a cheap, blank sheet that feels like a newspaper and that people actually use as one.

2. Choose your own sources and topics, with an ad-free option. Done. Google News, Apple News and AI news digests personalise by publisher and subject, and paid tiers drop the ads.

3. Tap any name to send a typed or spoken message. About half done. You can already tap or circle a name on screen and get instant information about the person (Circle to Search, Visual Intelligence, AI assistants). Voice-to-text messaging is everywhere. The missing link is a universal “reach this person” layer. A name still doesn’t lead to a contactable identity, so you end up hunting for an X, LinkedIn or email handle, much as you described in 2016.

4. An inbox for those messages, with your own name highlighted in the news. The pieces exist. Mention alerts and media-monitoring tools tell you when you appear in the news, and every platform has an inbox. They just aren’t joined into one “news inbox.”

5. Privacy is a small worry. This one aged worst. Spam, deepfakes and harassment are why public figures hide their contact details, and regulators now insist on consent.

On your question: yes, I think tap-a-name-to-message will come, but probably through your AI assistant rather than the newspaper. It would find the right channel and deliver your note, and the recipient’s assistant would filter it. The technology is nearly ready. What’s holding it back is getting people to agree to be reachable that way.