Myopia

"There are none so blind, as those who will not see"

I should know the person who said that, and yeah, I'm probably misquoting it slightly too, but for here it's enough to dwell a bot on that thought.

One week removed from "The Most Important Election in Our Lifetimes" (so says Senator Kerry, after all) , it's interesting to watch the direction each faction takes in digesting the results. Particularly interesting to me, is to speculate on the future of the Old Media.

Earlier this year, I wrote that we should not expect to see radical or sudden changes in the way most people get their news and information; while the New Media is a real force, and in time will simply abolish those bastions of elitism and blatant bias in the guise of objective journalism, it's a gradual process, and in any case, we will always need to be careful about trusting everything we read or hear, no matter the source. Also, since the Main Pain Media is the only source for most front-line reporting, hairspray and condescension will be in sharp focus in many television sets for the forseeable future. But then again, maybe not as long as I originally thought.

As you have doubtless heard from countless Home Entertainment salepeople, we are entering the where it is possible to integrate all your electronics, from cell phones to televisions to CD players and computers... you get the idea. What I find interesting is that sites like Ananova make it possible for you to specialize your news, and that's a trend worth thinking about. In a future world, Joe 'Merican is going to be able to program his news for the category, style, you name it. Imagine a world where you can program your computer to seek links to verify statements made by the newscaster, or where you can submit search queries to balance, say, CBS against positions by Little Green Footballs or Instapundit? Imagine programs which score the veracity of news aencies by measuring their claims against support? The simple fact is, the technology is already there, and the audience is heading there. It's entirely possible that the MPM will choose not to go there, fearing the loss of their influence, and so abrogate the evolution of Information Retrieval to a new competitor, as yet unnamed.

Wait and see, I guess. But I would remind Dan Rather, et al, that their game plan has been tried before. And there's a reason people speak dismissively of anyone who is a 'dinosaur'.