I wasn’t sure where to put this.
http://www.halorising.com/epic/
Either it’s scary or comforting.
It’s about the future of news.
Is it possible?
And for those who think everything I post has to do with Bushco…
this doesn’t.
You will need broadband to watch the video.
It sounds like they’ve re-read David Brin’s Earth too many times.
Don’t think I haven’t tried thinking this through (I’ve seen it before).
While they answer most of my questions there some stick with me.
The blogs: My main objection to the gathering and dissemination of news via blog is that they’re so often WRONG. Anyone who tries to use those in any professional or fiduciary capacity is begging for trouble.
I also think they’re VASTLY overestimating Google’s power vis-a-vis Microsoft. Google’s market cap today is $54B…Microsoft’s is $285B. and Google is still popping from their IPO last year. I’d be amazed if they stayed anywhere NEAR $200 per share for the next five years.
I think they suffer from a certain ‘Microsoft must be defeated’ mentality. But they fail to realize (or at least don’t make plain) that if Google is top dog in 2010 people will then think that GOOGLE is evil and must be defeated.
A few things I think they get right:
More news will be gathered electronically via filter. But they only touch tangentially one the inherent dangers of this: that it means people will only see news on topics that immediately interest them or only read opinion pieces that agree with their own.
There will remain real, hard compiled news for the elite that costs a lot of money to obtain. It will be complete, international and useful. It will also be expensive.
In short, those who are truly important will continue to get real news in a timely manner and those who are just sort of ‘news junkies’ will continue to get ever more watered down and useless crap.
C’est la vie et c’est la guerre.
You don’t see this already? The proliferation of news sources already allows conservatives to listen to conservative radio talk shows and liberals to listen to liberal radio talk shows. Greenpeace and PETA have publications, and so does the Beef Council and the logging industry. No matter what your point of view, there is a publication, Web site, radio show, TV show, or organization that will provide you fodder you can agree with. How many people today make a point of seeking out news and opinion pieces they disagree with?
Funny, this was my first response, but not so flippant. I just reread the book about 2 weeks ago and was struck by how much more familiar his renditions of the ‘net’ are today than they were 15 years ago when I first read it. Not that I believe him to be any more prophetic than he himself does, but I find his corollary arguments to be quite logical and not at all far fetched.
I am mainly convinced that there will be so much information out there that for us to try to wade through it would be so daunting that personal filters would have to be a requisite to any wanting to know even what the weather is in Dallas.
I’m not sure that the information power brokers will necessarily consolidate. I believe they will adapt and change and not be some damn obvious.
What liberal radio talk shows?
Let’s face it, kids, the “liberal media” lives only in the fevered imaginations of conservative pundits.
Well, to be fair there is this little thing called ‘Air America’.
rjung likely considers that bunch to be dangerous reactionaries. 
Radio didn’t kill newspapers, TV didn’t kill radio, and online news certainly hasn’t killed TV. I don’t see blogs changing the face of the media in 9 short years.
The printing press didn’t kill storytelling.
The emergence of wire services didn’t kill local news.
Radio didn’t kill newspapers
Television didn’t kill radio.
And “everyone” doesn’t do ANYTHING together.
The Internet, as much as may be fervently wished, isn’t going to kill traditional media. Influence change, yes. But not kill.
I don’t know about Torrance, rjung, but when I lived in the San Francisco area we had our pick of two talk radio stations, one of which had a liberal point of view, and the other a conservative POV. I used to listen to one on the way to work and one on the way home, or even switch back and forth between them during major events.
I can almost always find some news or editorial source that’s too liberal for me and another that’s too conservative, no matter what the topic. Even out here in the conservative ranching country of south-central Montana I can find media that delights in trashing President Bush and the Republicans. I’m surprised you can’t find any radio talk shows with a liberal slant in Torrance.
Emphasis on “little,” unfortunately. 
I enjoyed having them on my evening commute while it lasted.
Let’s put it this way: in the last 18 months, I have seen exactly one advertisement for a liberal-oriented talk radio show down here in SoCal. Everything else is either an ad for a right-wing talk show host or a right-wing talk radio network.
“Liberal media” my ass.
My main problem is, the authors assume that any of this social networking and filtering technology really works. It does somewhat, but not well enough for this to happen. I have never seen a recommendation on Amazon that I was interested in, and I have never seen a news feed service that could approach telling me all that I wanted to know. Maybe they could in the future, but they sure don’t now.
Also, if someone did come up with something like this, and it became so popular that everyone was using it, it would not last long. The same people who are spammers today would come up with a way of engineering it to their ends, and it would not continue to be so popular. Just MHO of course, but the past seems to indicate that it would be most likely.
Oh, and most people read crap anyway, so what would be the effective difference?
Really poorly produced and narrated. I couldn’t get through it all. Stupid too.