Epic 2014

MO · 06-10-2005, 02:31 PM

Robin Sloan & Matt Thompson made a 10 min mockumentry about the future of media.This is a transcript of that mockumentry.

It is the best of times,it is the worst of times.
In the year 2014 ppl have access to breadth and depth of information unimaginable in an earlier age.

Everyone contributes in some way.

Everyone participates to creat a living,breathing mediascape. However the Press,as you know it,has ceased to exist. The Fourth Estates fortunes have waned. 20th Century news organisations are an after-thought,a lonely remnant of a not too distant past.

The road to 2014 began in the mid-20th Century.

In 1989 ,Tim Berners-Lee,a computer scientist at the CERN particle physics laboratry in Switzerland,invents the World Wide Web

1994 sees the founding of Amazon.com. Its young creator dreams of a store that sells everthing. Amazons model,which would come to set the standard for Internet sales,is built on automated personalised recommendations-a store that can make suggestions.

In 1998 ,two Stanford programmers create Google. Their algorithm echoes the language of Amazon,it treats links as recommendations and from that foundation powers the worlds most effective search engine.

In 1999 ,TiVo transforms television by unshakling it from the constraints of time-and commercials.Almost noone who tries it ever goes back.
That year,a dot-com start- up named Pyra Labs unveils Blogger,a personalised publishing tool.

Friendster launches in 2002 and hundreds of thousands of young ppl rush to populate it with an incredibly detailed map of their lives,their interests and their social networks. Also in 2002,Google launches GoogleNews,a news portal. News organisations cry foul.
GoogleNews is edited entirely by computers.

In 2003 ,Google buys Blogger. Googles plans are a mystery,but their interest in Blogger is not unreasonable.
2003 is the year of the Blog

2004 will be remembered as the year that everything began.
Reason Magazine sends subscribers an issue with a satellite photo of their houses on the cover and information custom-tailored to each subscriber inside.
Sony and Philips unveil the worlds first mass-produced electronic newspaper.
Google unveils GMail,with a gigabyte of free space for every user.
Microsoft unveils Newsbot,a social news filter.
Amazon unveils A9,a search engine built on Googles technology that also incorporates Amazons trademark recommendations.
And then Google goes public.
Awash in new capital,the company makes a major acquisition.Google buys TiVo .

2005 In response to Googles recent moves,Microsoft buy Friendster.

2006 Google combines all of its services-TiVo,Blogger,GMail,GoogleNews and all of its searches into the Google Grid,a universal platform that provides a functionality limitless amount of storage space and bandwidth to store and share media of all kinds. Always online,accessible from anywhere. Each user selects their own level of privacy.
They can store their content securely on the Google Grid or publish it for all to see. It has never been easier for anyone to create as well as consume media.

2007 Microsoft responds to Googles mounting challenge with Newsbotster,a social news network and participatory journalism platform. Newsbotster ranks and sorts news based on what each users friends and colleagues are reading and viewing and it allows everyone to comment on what they see.
Sonys ePaper is cheaper than real paper this year. Its the medium of choice for Newsbotster.

2008 sees the alliance that will challenge Microsofts ambitions. Google and Amazon join forces to form Googlezon.Google supplies the Google Grid and unparalleled search technology. Amazon supplies the social recommendation engine and its huge commercial infrastructure. Together they use their detailed knowledge of every users social network demographics,consumption habits and interests to provide total customisation of content and advertising.

The News Wars of 2010 are notable for the fact that no actual news organisations take part.

Googlezon Finally checkmates Microsoft with features the software giant cannot match.
Using a new algorithm,Googlezons computers construct news stories dynamically,stripping sentences and facts from all content sources and recombining them. The computer writes a news story for every user.

In 2011 the slumbering Fourth Estate awakes to make its first and final stand. The New York Times Company sues Googlezon,claiming that the companies fact stripping robots are a violation of copyright law. The case goes all the way to the Supreme Court which on August 4,2011 decides in favour of Googlezon.

On Sunday,March 9 2014,Googlezon unleashes EPIC
Welcome to our world.
TheEvolving Personalised Information Construct is the system by which our sprawling,chaotic mediascape is filtered,ordered and delivered. Everyone contributes now-from blog entries,to phone-cam images,to video reports to full investigations. Many ppl get paid too-a tiny cut of Googlezons immense advertising revenue,proportional to the popularity of their contributions.
Epic produces a custom contents package for each user using their choices,consumption habits,interests,demgraphics and social network-to shape the product.
A new generation of freelance editors has sprung up ppl who sell their ability to connect,filter and prioritise the contents of EPIC.
We all subscrbe to many editors;EPIC allows us to mix and match their choices however we like. At its best,edited for the savviest readers,EPIC is a summary of the world-deeper,broader and more nuanced than anything ever available before.
But at its worst and for too many,EPIC is merely a collection of trivia.
Much of it untrue,all of it narrow,shallow and sensational.
But EPIC is what we wanted,it is what we chose and its commercial success preempted any discussions of media and democracy for journalistic ethics.

Today in 2014 the New York Times has gone offline in feeble protest to Googlzons hegemony.
The Times has become a print only newsletter for the elite and the elderly.
But perhaps there was another way.