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''EPIC 2014'' is a Flash movie released in November 2004 by
Robin Sloan Robin Sloan is an American author. His debut novel, '' Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore'', was published in 2012. Early life Sloan was born to a home economics teacher and an appliance salesman. He grew up in Troy, Michigan, where he attended ...
and Matt Thompson with original music by Aaron McLeran. It was based on a presentation they gave at the
Poynter Institute The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a non-profit journalism school and research organization in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. The school is the owner of the ''Tampa Bay Times'' newspaper and the International Fact-Checking Netwo ...
in the spring of that year. The movie is 8 minutes long and is licensed under a
Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
non-commercial license. 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 Google News is a news aggregator service developed by Google. It presents a continuous flow of links to articles organized from thousands of publishers and magazines. Google News is available as an app on Android, iOS, and the Web. Google rel ...
, with other Web 2.0 technologies like
blogging A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
,
social networking A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
and user participation may have on
journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (profes ...
and society at large in a hypothesized future. The film popularized the term ''Googlezon'' and touches on major
privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...
and
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
issues raised in this scenario.


Plot

The plot consists of a series of real life events from 1989 to 2004, and going through a series of hypothetical events through 2014. The first sentence of the running commentary quotes
Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
' '' A Tale of Two Cities'': "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." In 1989,
Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a profess ...
invents the World Wide Web. In 1994,
Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...
is launched. It is a store that sells everything, personalized for its users, that can even offer suggestions. In 1998,
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
is unleashed by two
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
students, promising a faster, more effective way to search. In 1999, Blogger is founded. Google comes out with
Google News Google News is a news aggregator service developed by Google. It presents a continuous flow of links to articles organized from thousands of publishers and magazines. Google News is available as an app on Android, iOS, and the Web. Google rel ...
, a service unique in that it requires no human intervention. In 2002,
Friendster Friendster was a social network game based in Mountain View, California, founded by Jonathan Abrams and launched in March 2003.Eric Eldon, August 4, 2008.Friendster raises $20 million, nabs a Googler to be CEO VentureBeat. Retrieved December 4, 2 ...
is released. In 2003, Google buys Blogger. In 2004, the rise of Gmail gives competition to
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
's Hotmail. Microsoft's Newsbot comes as a response to Google News.
Picasa Picasa was a cross-platform image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, integrated with a now defunct photo-sharing website, originally created by a company named Lifescape (which at that time was incubated by Ide ...
and A9 are also released this year. In August, Google goes public, acquires Keyhole (now Google Earth), a company that maps the world, and begins digitizing and indexing world libraries. Reason Magazine sends its subscribers satellite photos of their homes, with information tailored to them inside. From this point ''EPIC'' passes into the realm of fiction. In 2005, Microsoft buys Friendster in response to Google's action.
Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...
comes out with WifiPod, which allows users to "send and receive messages on the go". Then, Google unveils the Google Grid, a universal platform offering an unlimited amount of space and bandwidth that can be used to store anything. It allows users to manage their information two ways: store it privately or publish it to the entire grid. In 2007, Microsoft Newsbotster, a social news network, ranks and sorts news. It allows everyone to comment on what they see. In 2008, Google and Amazon merge to form Googlezon. Google supplies Google Grid, Amazon supplies their personalized recommendations. Googlezon is a system that automatically searches all content sources and splices together stories to cater to the interests of each individual user. When explaining how Googlezon profiles its users, the identification card of a man named
Winston Smith Winston Smith may refer to: People * Winston Smith (artist) (born 1952), American artist * Winston Smith (athlete) (born 1982), Olympic track and field athlete * Winston Boogie Smith (born ), American man killed by law enforcement in 2021 * Winst ...
appears on screen. Smith is the main character in
George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitar ...
's classic novel '' Nineteen Eighty-Four'', in which a dystopian society is ruled by a media-distorting government. The photograph on the identification card depicts
Robin Sloan Robin Sloan is an American author. His debut novel, '' Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore'', was published in 2012. Early life Sloan was born to a home economics teacher and an appliance salesman. He grew up in Troy, Michigan, where he attended ...
. In 2010, the news wars rage between Microsoft and Googlezon. These "News Wars of 2010" are notable in that they involve no actual news organizations. In 2011, the slumbering Fourth Estate awakens to make its first and final stand. ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' sues Googlezon, "claiming the fact-stripping robots are a violation of copyright law", but the
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
rules in favor of Googlezon. In 2014, Googlezon unleashes EPIC, the Evolving Personalized Information Construct, which pays users to contribute any information they know into a central grid, allowing the system to automatically create news tailored to individuals, entirely without journalists. The word "EPIC" is an amalgam of three fundamental physical and mathematical constants; e (Euler's number), pi (π) and c (the speed of light in a vacuum). These are depicted in the shadow of the EPIC logo. EPIC stores and categorizes not only news, but the demographics, political beliefs, and consumption habits of every user. At its best, 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." EPIC is so popular that it triggers the downfall of ''The New York Times'', which goes offline and becomes "a print newsletter for the elite and the elderly." The narrative follows the epic format, with the clashing of antagonistic entities, conquests and retreats, a concern for genealogy, and the central moral question, often rough and binary but also thrilling, of good vs. evil. The narration ends with the statement: "Perhaps there was another way."


History

The inspiration for the movie came from a speech about the future of the news given in 2003 by Martin A. Nisenholtz, CEO of New York Times Digital, given to the
Software and Information Industry Association The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) is a trade association dedicated to the entertainment, consumer and business software industries. Established in 1984 as the Software Publishers Association (SPA), the SIIA took its new na ...
. Sloan showed the transcript to Thompson, which, after much discussion and brainstorming, led to, "a very different interpretation of what Nisenholtz was talking about." After some back and forth discussion while on a trip to
Miami, Florida Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
, Sloan and Thompson pondered Nisenholtz's original point when he mentioned the game '' Ultima Online'' and put it into the context of
journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (profes ...
. They soon agreed that it is the most advanced example of a medium people create by merely participating in it. The game, ''Ultima Online'', is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. As people play, they add to all the other players' experiences of the game, altering the whole fabric of the medium through their interactions with it. They wondered, "what if you could apply that model to journalism?" What if individuals could create and affect news stories simply by reading, viewing, and/or listening to them? After their trip to Miami, Sloan and Thompson began assembling their ideas. They organized a powerpoint project, titled, ''The Miami Project'', and began a series of presentations in their local offices at the
Poynter Institute The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a non-profit journalism school and research organization in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. The school is the owner of the ''Tampa Bay Times'' newspaper and the International Fact-Checking Netwo ...
. Their colleagues were interested yet unenthusiastic about the project. In the spring of 2004, while preparing for an annual Online Leaders seminar at the Institute, they were asked to present it again. This time, they decided to present the story from the perspective of the future, as if it had already happened. They assembled the first version of the film late one night in Poynter's visual journalism lab, on an
iMac G4 The iMac G4 is an all-in-one personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from January 2002 to August 2004. It replaced the iMac G3 and was succeeded by the iMac G5. Design and marketing The iMac G4 featured an L ...
running Final Cut Pro. The narrative was met with enthusiasm by the conference participants, and they soon began revising and polishing their presentation, this time using
Macromedia Flash Macromedia Flash may refer to: *Adobe Animate, a multimedia authoring and computer animation program formerly known as ''Macromedia Flash'' *Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform ...
. They kept presenting it, introducing the film dramatically – gliding into rooms wearing
tin foil hat A tin foil hat is a hat made from one or more sheets of aluminium foil (commonly called "tin foil" in the United States and New Zealand), or a piece of conventional headgear lined with foil, often worn in the belief or hope that it shields the br ...
s. They always followed the movie with the question: "If this is what the year 2014 looks like, what are you going to do today to make sure your news organization doesn't get sidelined? How do you make sure you can play in this environment?" As the summer passed on, they thought of future plans for ''EPIC 2014'', including a possible website with an interactive timeline and
blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
. Though these never materialized, and Sloan and Thompson eventually moved on to new positions, Thompson at the ''
Fresno Bee ''The Fresno Bee'' is a daily newspaper serving Fresno, California, and surrounding counties in that U.S. state's central San Joaquin Valley. It is owned by The McClatchy Company and ranks fourth in circulation among the company's newspapers. I ...
'', and Sloan at the '' Current''. Finally, by the third week of November 2004, they decided to just post the film. They posted it to three blogs: ''Convergence Chaser'', ''Snarkmarket'', and Jason Kottke's popular blog. They never intended it to become as widespread as it did. But it soon became very popular. By December, the film was
slashdotted The Slashdot effect, also known as slashdotting, occurs when a popular website links to a smaller website, causing a massive increase in traffic. This overloads the smaller site, causing it to slow down or even temporarily become unavailable. Thi ...
. Several hundred links from various forums and blogs followed in early 2005. In January 2005, they released an update to the original movie, ''EPIC 2015''. The sequel follows the same general direction of the original, but also examines the roles of podcasting,
GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...
and web map services such as
Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...
. Sloan himself does not believe the future portrayed in the film will actually come to pass, saying that he certainly doesn't believe that Google and Amazon would ever actually merge. He also believes that ''The New York Times'' would actually be the last media organization to fold, citing, "some incredibly good and smart things that they do in their online publishing." But he points out that the purpose of the film is not to paint an accurate picture of the future, but rather, to illustrate the fact that the various monopolies of the large media organizations are currently being threatened by many of the new online services. He states that, "It's very possible that there will be some crazy integrated suite of Google services that will rule the world, but it won't be such a big deal. I do hope that there will be an integrated and easy way to navigate the network of citizen reports."


Cultural impact

The term ''Googlezon'' has gained a life of its own,Tracking the word Googlezon
sometimes being used to generally refer to real or hypothetical convergences of Google-like and Amazon-like technology. The term ''Amazoogle'' is sometimes used to describe the same effect.


See also

* Consumer privacy *
Privacy concerns regarding Google Google's changes to its privacy policy on March 16, 2012 enabled the company to share data across a wide variety of services. These embedded services include millions of third-party websites that use AdSense and Analytics. The policy was widely cr ...
*
Criticism of Google Criticism of Google includes concern for tax avoidance, misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of others' intellectual property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people's privacy and collaboration with the US militar ...


References


External links


EPIC 2014

EPIC 2014 and EPIC 2015
{{DEFAULTSORT:Epic 2014 Dystopian films Films set in 2014 Films set in 2015