Thought Exercise: Describe a new medium

Last night I finished the book Burn Rate describing one founder’s journey through the craziness of the dot com hey day. I enjoyed it — it’s a really good book, not quite as good as Startup, but it’s worth reading nonetheless. On the last page of the book, the author Michael Wolff, recalls an assignment he had in school:

Describe in a one-page essay a completely new medium. Not television. Not radio. Not records. Not movies. Not magazines. Not newspapers. Not books. Something else.

Go on, take 60 seconds to think about that. What would a new medium look like? How would it work? What would it do? Where would it fit in? Who would invent it?

The iPodTouch/iPhone/iPad family of touch-screen iOS devices strikes me as a new medium. Twitter is a new medium. What’s the next new medium? What’s your new medium?