Near Future News
SF author David Brin speculates about the future of news, among other things, in a USC/Annenberg
Online Journalism Review piece:
Even nowadays, when a person's looks were largely a matter of taste, augmentation and budget, it felt good to make heads turn. Anyway, Sandiego never lacked for pretty people. More flocked in all the time, undeterred by the prim legal admonitions and health warnings. She was depriving no one, by moving away.
Out of habit, she tooth-clicked commands that tapped into other eyes, other cams. First a satellite view of this area, with the Spirit standing out most prominently, bobbing gently but hugely against her mooring mast at the nearby Zep-Port. In contrast, little farther away, arsenal ships anchored by the new Shelter Island Naval Base appeared fuzzy, as demanded by security protocols. Silly. You could zoom in on them from three million, four hundred and seventy thousand, five hundred and twelve other points of view that Homeland Security did not control.
One of those POVs -- a penny cam somebody had stuck on a lamppost, just above the chewing gum -- won a brief auto-bid auction to sell her a closer view of the marketplace. A good panorama for half a mil. Not that Tor cared about that. Omnipresence spread and prices fell as the cams bred and proliferated like insects.
It sure was changing the news biz, at least in urban areas. Wherever cam overlap grew beyond seven-layers deep, lying became damn near impossible. Any kind of lying at all.
I guess the next generation will take that for granted, Tor pondered. But at twenty-six, she was old enough to remember when people tried all sorts of tricks to fabricate images and fancy pov-deceits, using tech wizardry to fake events, alibis and attempt blackmail. Till the age-old solution of more witnesses made that kind of scam increasingly impossible. With enough savvy eyes at work, consensus-reality must come closer to reality itself.
Or so went the latest truism. Tor distrusted all truisms.
[via
Online Journalism Review]
Posted by johndan at March 7, 2004 08:16 PM
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