The fields of new media and emerging media are not new, nor are they temporary.

Print publishers probably fretted over the rise of the radio.  And radio and print fretted over TV.  And network TV fretted over cable TV.  And TV is fretted over the internet.

The media landscape has always been in transition, the only thing that has changed is the pace of change.

Those of us working in "emerging" media however, frequently misjudge the timing and pace of change.  We advocate advanced social media information mining before our clients have managed to harness most of their own internal customer information.  We speak about IPTV when it isn't even available in most major markets.  We speak about WiMax, Android and Open Social before the true capabilities are yet known.  We are talking about the death of the 30 second spot while most major brands are still investing most of their money on television.

We are living ahead of the curve. 

In the words of one of my teammates, we are living in a state of "perpetual nascence".

And sure, QR codes may make it big in 3 years from now.  But in the meantime, it is far more important that we understand and appreciate the unique position that we are in.  We are AHEAD of the curve.  Preparing clients for the future isn't necessarily about building tomorrow today.  Rather, it is about incremental innovation, setting the seeds for tomorrow, building familiarity and a strong foundation on which we can activate in 3 years from now, when the world has caught to us. 

And you can rest assured, we'll be talking about as yet unknown technologies and platforms, and perpetually planning for the arrival of the nascent lives we are living.