The Future is Now (and Other Lame Catchphrases)

After considering Colin's hypothetical questions and watching the scary 2014 video, I don't really see what's going to be so different in the future. I already stopped my subscription to the Hartford Courant earlier in the year, thus ending the long established relationship I held all my life with the newspaper. Honestly, I don't look to the time, the Boston Globe, or any particular newspaper website as an authority figure. My news sites consist of A, B, C and sadly the inner nerd in me keeps me coming back to D. I go to Google News if I'm looking for more information, turn to Yahoo! for both its easy accessibility to message boards, blogs, etc. in order to discuss events/find out the difference between truth and rumor. Facebook will always be one of the best breaking news sources on the web, and as more and more paper newsjournalists turn to blogging out of necessity, their content will primarily be pushed out on social networking sites like this one. I don't have to go to the times' site when blogs take over, but these hardworking journalists will still serve as an authority. As I pointed out in the last blog, the Yahoo! Sports basketball blogger was the go-to guy to release the big story of the day. I think as more journalists master blogging, they will remain atop the hierarchy, providing us with a news authority. But we still will be able to participate in all these stories in the shape of message boards, comments, and most importantly to me, posting on our own social networking sites.

I am by no means an investigative journalist, but on my Facebook page, I've bitched about all things DEP for the past 5 months. Our department has seen its share of horror (Charla Nash), screwjobbery (the state "sweeping" all of the DEP's money set aside for special green projects), and anger (you try telling the hunter sporting the one overall strap over his shoulder that his license doubled), and have posted about this on FB quite a bit. Aside from the usual "that sucks" from friends, I've gotten updates from other state workers about the state of affairs in their departments as well. Rell and the legislature are not winning many friends with some of their recent decisions, but save for 2 of my friends on FB, none of them would know much anything at all about the situation at the department unless they went actively looking for it. I'm not breaking the story of the year by any means, or even saving someone's life, but my status provided people with a glimpse of what was going on, and those who wanted to ask about certain "stories" either did in person, or commented back and forth with me.

So honestly, the newspaper currently has no place in my life at the moment. Will I miss it? Sentimentally speaking, of course. But I have so much information at my disposal now, that I'm sure I can fill my head with other things to keep my mind off of it.

EDIT: As for the whole eDemocracy thing, this isn't anything new. Any major online video game community like WoW , or forum community like SomethingAwful.com lives and dies by their community forums. The video game developers (the government in this case) looks to its playerbase for suggestions, for bug testing, for developing their own little macros and addon programs to keep the game fun and easy. The two exchange on the forums, expressing concerns and opinions, which largely molds the product into what it is today. As for SomethingAwful, they will be forever grateful to the community which has kept them alive today. The content on the site as a whole depends entirely on what the readers/contributors want on there-- they downrate things if they don't like it, and then the ideas get scrapped. It only makes sense that these highly successful and productive online communities would trigger a light bulb over someone's head who said "oh yeah, we can do that in our real society too!"