epic 2015 reflection

EPIC 2015, a flash movie filmed by Robin Sloan in 2004 for the Museum of Media History, is a prophecy on online media. At the time of production, Internet was just at its infancy stage but the movie presents itself as a history development recap of the Net through 2015. It is in fact a future history of the Internet. Yet, the pre-vision is scarily accurate. A forecast of what could happen turns out to be something that is actually going on. All milestones, except the merging of Google with Amazon to form Googlezon, more or less spring up. We are indeed living in a world of EPIC, the Evolving Personalized Information Construct. Benefitted by the development of Information Technology, we now have IPod emerges as a portable media player and multi-purpose pocket computer that functions as a personal tailored portal of music, images, videos, and online contacts. Google, as forecasted, materializes to be the most popular gateway for searching. The coverage of “Google Grid” is possibly extended over the entire world which makes real time message exchange feasible. This boosts the growth of online news and poses a great threat to the traditional print form of a newspaper. Today, printed copies of newspaper are really preferred by elite officers and businessmen while the young generation and general public usually choose a soft copy subscription. Improvement in convenience and application is also witnessed these years. The availability of high data transmission rate and cloud computing enable Net users to exchange and store up massive amounts of data easily while Google map can provide real-time geographical directions. Easy-to- use tools like Blogger and social network platforms like Facebook are open to everyone for sharing personal thoughts and images. Google, through tracking these users’ history of search terms, can build up a detailed profile of the Net users, and contribute to a Personalized Information Construct. Say, Digg, is a news aggregator that offers selected stories according to the favoritism of the Internet audience. Yet, the collection of such information can be a breach of personal privacy and so official regulations are in force to avoid over-sharing. For instance, Facebook has implemented a customizable set of privacy controls to allow its users to shield their information from uninvited individuals.