Ever since I first watched “EPIC 2014”, shortly after it was released (toward the end of 2004), I have pondered the future of journalism. I couldn’t imagine that it was as dire as the eight-minute movie made it out to be, with the diminution and almost extinction of the New York Times and the rest of mainstream journalism by the year 2014. This was, of course, before Twitter and LinkedIn became mainstream and only several months after Facebook was first launched and barely a blip on the social media scene.
According to Wikipedia, launched just a little over a decade ago, “The movie is presented from the viewpoint of a fictional ‘Museum of Media History in the year 2014. It explores the effects that the convergence of popular News aggregators, such as Google News, with other Web 2.0 technologies like blogging, social networking and user participation may have on journalism and society at large in a hypothesized future. The film popularized the term Googlezon and touches on major privacy and copyright issues raised in this scenario.”
That’s all very interesting, but what really captured my imagination was the concept that everyone – yes, everyone – becomes a contributor and a creator of news, as well as a consumer of news. Interesting theory, but, in 2004, it seemed so very far from reality. Yet, with today’s technology, it all appears to be coming true ... and almost right on schedule. I’ll let you watch the movie and draw your own conclusions, but there is no doubt that the predictions espoused in “EPIC 2014” are eerily on target. ...
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