EPIC 2014

If you have the patience to appreciate a slowly-developing 5-minute online movie, you'll enjoy Robin Sloan's EPIC 2014, a prognostication set in 2014 that looks back to the events (from 1989-2014) that lead to the demise of traditional media.

Sloan depicts a mildly dystopian portrait of technology and democracy challenging editorial wisdom. This future shows a society where myriad points-of-view paint the world in shades of yellow journalism.

In EPIC 2014, blogs and social networks (and their affluent, paranoid technological patrons) harm our society by sacrificing the professional attitude toward media and media ethics so carefully cultivated during the 20th century.

Today, to read the Drudge Report is to know the power of an editor whose personal foibles outweigh his journalistic principles, and therefore to understand how the seeds of Sloan's EPIC 2014 have already been sown.