Skeptical Snob

I consider myself a media snob. I check the Drudge Report at least five times a day. Crooks and Liars is my favorite spot on the web for commentary. I make posts on Media Matters. I even helped McGraw Milhaven -€“ the radio host I worked for this summer at KTRS in St. Louis -€“ put his own blog on the web.

Until Thursday, I thought I was savvy. I thought I was in. Then I see this EPIC 2015 and I'm floored. How has this been out there in the "newsosphere" -€“ a word with a definition I am still trying to find -€“ for so long and be so popular without me knowing about it? I was supposed to be the one to discover this and show it to everyone I knew. Now I was out. It was deflating to be sure.

But wait a minute. What about Media Matters and Crooks and Liars? What happened to starting my own blog with McGraw? Yeah! I know more about this crap than 99 percent of people out there. Ask my mom what a blog is and she'll tell you to watch your mouth. Tell my uncle in Cleveland that I'm making a post on a web site about the smear campaign against Cindy Sheehan happening on right-wing blogs and he'll change the subject. It's not because he's being rude. It's because he has no idea what the hell I'm talking about!!

The fact is that the people talking about EPIC 2015 are even bigger media snobs than me. They're in an even smaller, more elitist group of people who solely subsist on talking about this stuff. They write, read and dream about "convergence" and the "newsosphere" as if it all mattered in the minds of the other 99.999 percent of the population. You think Joe Everyman has the time, inclination or even the ability to keep up with this stuff?

And that's the thing about EPIC 2015. For these IPod "neighborhood-casts" or "Googlezon" to be effective, isn't there some implied consent and participation on the part of the user? And isn't there an assumption that the usership of these tools will continue to grow? Are we to assume that every farmer or factory worker out there will be as capable to participate as their white-collar counterpart? My point is that as we venture out into the technological frontier, the possibilities grow at an exponential rate while our own personal capabilities stay constant -€“ or arguably decline. We're being out-paced. An avid IPod user can not so much as learn how to use his IPod FM tuner in his car before five other gadgets and add-ons are available that he has to have. What happens when it gets worse? What happens when we can't afford it all? Better Question: Who really cares? And how much does this really change the newsosphere when 95 percent of people out there don't even own an IPod?

I like what Matt Thompson said about how obsolete ideas become over time. "Visions of the future tend to age poorly." He's right, but not in the way he means it. He seems to imply that since they've had to re-work EPIC once already, things will keep getting more and more absurd as time goes on.

I tend to think that his latest vision of the future will too, age poorly. Not because things will get more out of hand. Rather, I firmly believe that -€“ and maybe for no other reason than incompetence or pride -€“ people will put down their obsolete CD players, turn off their Flat-Screen TV's that unfortunately don't have HDTV capabilities, pick up their out-dated camera phones they bought 3 months ago, call the Powers That Be and let out a collective, "Slow the hell down!"

I wish I could make an educated prediction on the future of the digital newsosphere. I wish I knew enough about the subject. I love the idea of being a journalism junkie during this supposed age of unparalleled innovation and media convergence. But I don't know enough yet to guess what'll happen with it in 10 years. It would be just as relevant -€“ or irrelevant, if you will -€“ as anyone else's.

Instead, I seem to only have enough knowledge of the people who will be using it. And at this point, I just don't think people care or know enough for it happen as quickly as EPIC claims.