The News Scene Circa 2014

Here's an interesting, clever animation about an imagined future of the news world--all about an evolution to a hyper-personalized, globalized "construct". And it gets extra props for mentioning Reason's June issue.

Check it out here.

[Thanks to Politech's Declan McCullagh for the pointer].

Comments

[yodel]

I thought Al Gore invented the internet.

[Grummun]

It was interesting until it turned out to be a "responsible professional main stream media good; irresponsible amatuer internet media bad" bit. Sounds like somebody (perhaps at The Times?) has an axe to grind with Google News. The idea of a Google-ish automated news service that culls facts from multiple sources to build custom news stories has a certain appeal, and is probably technically possible now, although I disagree that the Supremes would rule as predicted on the hypothesized copyright suit.

G

[crimethink]

I think the question is, after the NYT and other traditional sources went off-line, where was Google News getting its news from? Epic would not necessarily be reliable, since nothing prevents different users from submitting false and even contradictory reports.

[Warren]

The 'future history' they give is of course total fiction. But I do think the 'epic' (what's up with the reflected PI in the logo?) they describe is indeed the inevitable future. The notion that that this is somehow tragic is pure ludditism.

[Andy D]

It's funny, often when I see certain dystopic visions I think "Awesome!, sign me up!". Did you hear about Epic at its best? It's more detailed, more pertinent news for those who use it well. And the downside? It can't help inform the intransigently uninformed.

And Warren, I thought the relfected pi made for a neat graphic... ummm, you know... the "pi" in the name is just reflected as the symbol... I think it looks cool.

[Warren]

Andy,
I'm sure you're right. I was hoping there was a more conspiratorial/Masonic cabal symbolism behind it.

I'm totally with you on the "sign me up" reaction. In fact, my second or third thought on EPIC was, "what about the jack?". You know the interface jack, ala 'The Matrix', that plugs your brain directly into the grid. You know what you get when you marry EPIC with 'the jack'?...

THE BORG!!!

Awesome! Sign me up!

[Shover Robot]

Any vision of the future that doesn't take into account the coming war with the Pusher Robots is nothing but a pipe dream.

[Mark Draughn]

Yeah, awesome vision of the future. No doubt, like many visions, wrong in many ways. I first suspected it was dystopian when the sample user was Winston Smith (the protagonist of Orwell's "1984").

"after the NYT and other traditional sources went off-line, where was Google News getting its news from?"

I think it was implied ("everone contributes") that this was bloggers, paid bloggers ("many people get paid"), otherwise known as freelance journalists.

I wonder why they think that this personalized market-driven system would have weaker journalistic ethics than we have now? Don't they realize that our current mainstream media are also the result of a commercial success in the market?

I mean, cynicism aside, ethics has sales value: I prefer to get my meat from an honest butcher, my clothes from an honest tailor, and my news from an honest source.

The animation even mentions freelance editors. People who want honest news would subscribe to editors who make honesty a priority.

[Rick Barton]

1984's Winston Smith is an inappropriate sample user of an information service that is so based on voluntary interaction. No Big Brother running this future.

The info served up needn't be inaccurate. A premium for predictive value would work it's way into the mix and editors who were more reliable would become more sought after. Isn't it exactly this dynamic that is playing a role in the current declining popularity of the traditional mainstream news sources?

Also, free societies tend to produce higher regard for the truth because there is less of "forcing others to see it your way". The freer the society, the more people will benefit from accurate information. Much information comes with bias. But when the bias reflects a better meme, it will be rewarded. For instance, a bias that contends that more government control tends to produce less benefit for a broad demographic is a meme that yields empirical verification.

Also, saying that much of the info will be "trivial" is just another way of saying that many of the users of the info matrix are affluent enough to afford trivialities.

[Will]

Yeah... but can I read it while I'm taking a dump?

[Will]

As for Yodel's tired "Al Gore invented the internet" ... just once I'd like to wake up to a world where stupid assholes didn't repeat right wing nonesense as if it were the punchline to the funnest joke ever told. Go fuck yourself.

[Rick Barton]

Actually, Al Gore said that he "created the internet". Gore's famous for his incessant lying, and that's no joke.

[Captain Awesome]

It's fair to say that a feedback system like Ebay's could be used to verify journalistic integrity. And there's is plenty of trivial, false B.S. out there now, but the Globe and Inquirer aren't taken that seriously. I think there'd continue to be a large market for fantasy news, it's a question of how big, and how swarm media would over-hype nonesense compared with our current model. All in all, I look forward to this future.

P.S. I think the supreme court case line would have been more effective if instead of siding with Epic, they had simply stated one cannot copyright "facts"

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