http://www.letitblog.com/epic/
[Warning: verbosity alert]
An ambitious morality tale on the inherent dangers of media consolidation. It's decently executed, but could have stood to be longer and more in-depth. I'd be interested in seeing version 2.5 (positing that this one was 1.0).
But it does give rise to broader, more profoundly frightening thoughts about the malleability of reality through manipulation of perception ... a phenomenon we see merely the pale beginnings of today in FoxNews' viewership's view of the world. A schism between actual facts and the stage-managed perception of the real ... which becomes a reality unto itself.
Up ahead, there's a signpost ...
(with apologies to the ghost of Rod Serling).
What the piece doesn't go into, and what's far more interesting for my sci-fi-loving money, is the effect of such intimately personalized versions of the events of the world and their interrelations. How would this change society? Do we become exponentially more divided and factionalized? How would it be reflected in the world of the man on the street? Whose version of reality becomes most dominant and why?
Could this incessant and increasingly perfected customization of our worldview lead to serious widespread withdrawal from society as a whole? Could people, wrapped in their own little safe and familiar "pocket universes" figuratively disappear from human society, becoming voyeuristic observers instead of participants?
Those questions suggest more frightening answers ("I'll take 'The Infopocalypse' for 8 billion blarps, Alex") than this little Flash animation does. It's still a nicely nasty little neo-Orwellian idea. I just wish they'd extend their reach and depth. With much more work, it could end up important.
Nebula Award Winner Walter Jon Williams touched tangentially on this in his novella "Elegy for Angels and Dogs", a sequel to [and Ace Books Sci-Fi Double mate of] Roger Zealazny's "The Graveyard Heart". Williams' profound reality-disconnect was due to the quantum splitting off of literal pocket universes, completely tailored to the creator.
In the story (a very good one, I might add), these constructs become enormously, apocalyptically ... "popular" isn't the right word ... "prevalent" ... so much so that the planet is virtually depopulated in favor of these "You == God" custom realities. If anyone with five grand could commission an infinite universe infinitely tailored to their every whim and desire and twisted need, how many fewer people would we see on the streets each day? How long would it take for large portions of the race to simply withdraw into their own cocoons, never to be seen again?
One character in the story speculates that the reason humanity never made contact with ETs is that most of the races who might have contacted us discovered this custom-cosmos-creating ability and slowly but surely ... withdrew from this universe into their own. It's a neat, somewhat chilling idea.
This Flash presentation, EPIC (http://www.letitblog.com/epic/), put me in mind of that. The creators should extend their grasp, and pull in deeper questions. What if these "pocket media universes" become widely-used? Swathed in the comforting soft-focus filter of news/media we want to see ... in the way we want to see it ... with only points of view we want to hear, how far could people really unplug from the actual physical world? How many would choose to do it? How deep could the reality disconnect become before we see strange societal effects? And how much power would it give those whose influence could almost literally "generate reality" for hundreds of millions? Billions?
Sorry, a chill went up my spine for a minute there.
Just a cheery thought from your friendly neighborhood thinks-too-damned-much-sometimes guy.