I think no one will deny the significant role media has played in our everyday life. However, it is not quite easy to define and explain what media actually is. One reason to account for this is that media seems intangible as we just know it is something like a pool to store information or a carrier to convey information. Besides, media is changing and developing every second, from traditional posters and newspapers in our desks to TV and radio in our living rooms to smart phones in our hands. Media never stop its step, so what future media is going to be like? I think the major changes are as follows.

Firstly, the performance of interactivity will be largely enhanced. In past days, the structure of information distribution is unsymmetrical, which can be seen as a "one-to-many" model, we all get information from a single-track way, with no feedback, no communication among audiences, and no exchange among these resources. We can only sit at our home, waiting for the information to come to knock our doors. While in the future, the media tend to be a "many-to-many"  model. We don't receive information passively, instead, any individual with the appropriate technology can now produce his or her own media products, including images, text, and sound about whatever he or she chooses. Interactive new media will become a true benefit to every one because people can express their thought in more than one way with the technology that we have today and there is no longer a limit to what we can do with our creativity. There won't be any fixed media producers or media receivers, we can be either or both of them. With this change, another information booming age will definitely arrive.

Secondly, future media will be widely used as a powerful tool to promote social changes. It can be a radical, socio-technical paradigm to challenge the dominant, neoliberal and technologically determinist, especially for common people. This point of view can be demonstrated by some group movement that had already happened, for example, in the beginning of August, those organizers of the serious turmoil in UK used their Blackberry mobile phones and Twittter to contact each other, which is convenient, instant and not easy to detect. Of course, not all social change bring by media will be radical and extreme. We can solve the problems in a milder way, such as using websites, microblogs, and online videos to demonstrate the effectiveness of the social movement or to make our appeal to be more widespread and gain more public attention.

From these two points above, we can say that with the development of media, we will create a brand new era, when the interactivity within media field will be enhanced and individual's power will be strengthened.

(By Huang Qi Editor: Cui Xuyan)