Tuesday, April 24, 2007

2014/2015

Back in 2005, Murry C turned me on to this most provocative take on how news, reality and society will change when EPIC becomes real as we leave the 'aughts" of the 21st century. Created by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson, 2014/15 shows how the "objective" nature of "the media" will be transformed into EPIC (Evolving Personalized Information Construct), a digital environment that subjectifies news and turns it into the start point of an information appliance that meets our every need. In looking at this, one can question the impact this will have on civilization when "news" is tailored to our every whim with little regard as to what is considered to be accepted as true or valid by society as a whole. To be sure, objective events like earthquakes and hurricanes will be covered and viewed by all concerned parties but everything else will be shaped, processed and delivered in bite size morsels to all interested parties, kept under the control of systems and corporations to a degree unheard of in the halcyon days of reporting during the latter part of the Vietnam War. Is this a good thing? Only time will tell.

2 comments:

MurryC said...

The updated version (2015) brings a couple of responses.
I think I actually like the original 2014 better. They didn't feel the necessity to throw in the kitchen sink (the "WifiPod" being the most glaring example), thereby cluttering the simplicity of the original vision.

More importantly, I think, the 2015 addition has already been outstripped by events. Look at Twittervision [ http://twittervision.com/ ]. We're already pretty much there on that account...which still really has nothing to add to the Googlezon motif.

Remoran said...

I tend to agree on the 2014 take although the 2015 does touch upon some interesting issues. Events do tend to pass us by no matter how hard we try to keep up. Twittervision looks interesting but I agree that it does not add to the Googlezon equation.