The end of media as we know it?

I recently came across the following little movie at http://www.epic2014.com/

Apart from being very well put together, the movie raises some interesting questions. Does the increasing use of blogs ( recent survey suggest 52% of US teenagers blog ) spell the end for traditional journalistic and editorial process? In all honesty, I think that people are becoming less trustworthy, more cynical about what they read on the internet an this will lead to a increased reliance on traditional news oulets. I for one usually use the bbc as my canonical source of information, as I trust that some sort of research and vetting will have been done on any article before it is published.

I don't think it is news stories that we need to worry about. The real problem is probably more to do with factual information. The wikipedia, for example is a quality control mess ( as recently admitted by the founders )

google and other search engines make it very easy for people to find information, but there is no guarantee that this information is in any way correct. This is especially worrying in the case of medical advice.

Some of the points, in the movie, on targeted marketing and pulling together disparate pieces of information on an individual are very well made. I'm one of these people however who does not necessariy see this as a bad thing.

I especially liked the 1984 reference ( the individual being profiled on the identity card is called Winston Smith , for those who missed it )

To broaden the scope slightly , googles recent developments are truly amazing, it really shows what you can do with a large information base and an innovative approach to using this.

Google base looks interesting, especially as google state ' Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google Base' . But that will need to the subject of another post....