Hidden Nook

Two current glimpses of the future include one that should be a little worrying for the old media empires. An eight-minute flash movie called Epic was created by staff at the Poynter Institute for journalism in Florida last year and has now been linked to and discussed by bloggers all over the world. The movie is a funny look back, supposedly from 2014, at the history of the web. As the years tick past 2004, the vision becomes chilling.

The ambition, technological dominance and deep pockets of one company — Google — cause it to rise inexorably. First comes the Google Grid, a vast file and content-sharing network that redefines the web. Then comes Googlezon, which brings together Google’s technical reach and the “social recommendations” of Amazon to create an unbeatable force in e-commerce. Finally, after Google wins a Supreme Court battle in 2011 with The New York Times, comes Epic, the Evolving Personalised Information Construct. Epic provides customised news and information for each consumer, some of it brilliant, most of it “narrow, shallow, sensationalist trivia”. By 2014, Epic rules the world. The New York Times has gone offline and become a “print- only newsletter for the elite and the elderly”. Surely not.