EPIC 2014
The release of the Internet movie EPIC 2014 has gotten a lot of buzz recently in the blogosphere, including a discussion in On The Media on NPR last week. For the most part, notwithstanding some comments during the beginning and end, the movie marvels at the beautiful dream of the Internet: it will somehow allow the media to whither away, and allow us all to become the media. It is a beautiful aesthetic, in its own way. Still, it strikes me as just as improbable as the idea that information technology will allow all national borders to whither away. Or, more to the point, it strikes me as just as improbable as the communist ideal that the state will slow whither away- a convenient fiction based more in desire than in any real facts.
Maybe all of us in the blogosphere should ask ourselves, what good are the mainstream media (in the broad sense of the phrase) so often ridiculed in our webpages? Could we live without them? I think the answer to this is a firm no. We might recognize three main information-generating functions of media (not that these exist a priori, but they are a useful categorization). First, they repeat and retransmit basic facts (“The President today said that…”). Second, they offer up opinions and analyses of these basic facts (“Why do you think President Bush said that, Mr. Novak?”). Third, they ferret out more fundamental facts, facts that often powerful people and agencies would like to remain hidden (e.g., Woodward and Bernstein and the Deep Throat affair).
The first two functions are being made easier and easier by the Internet, and EPIC 2014 is right insofar as it pictures this process becoming more automatic and personalized. Any one interested enough to read about the President’s speech can read the transcript or see the video minutes after it occurs, making a summary article about it the next day in the newspaper nonessential for transmitting the basic facts. The over-abundance of blogs means that there are a plethora of opinions and analyses of all the basic facts of the day floating around the Internet, making newspaper columnists not necessarily unimportant (they are often quite good at what they do- that’s how they got the job!) but only one of many voices discussing the news. The New York Times decision, for example, to put only their columnists behind their pay wall shows that the management there might not get it- the columnists are arguably the most dispensable part of what the Times provides. The third function, however, has become if anything more important in the Internet era. The hard work of digging up fundamental facts requires people who can focus full-time on it, with support staff helping them and an institution dedicated to helping them. Very few bloggers have that set-up, with the exception of some of the extremely dedicated or the extremely wealthy.
The world as envisioned by EPIC 2014 visualizes news being managed by big corporations and free-wheeling bloggers. In that world, news will be “superficial”, as EPIC 2014 itself acknowledges. It’s time for bloggers to get over their distrust of the MSM, and work to find financially-stable ways for fundamental facts to make their way into cyberspace. Otherwise, it will all just be a media landscape "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
