The EPIC 2014 video gave a very glim outlook to the future of journalism if Google was able to become a monopoly. The not-too-distant future does not favor the print media or even online versions of the print media. The video suggests that the New York Times is now only a newsletter for the old and the elite of the country. Google's media dominance starts with a 2008 takeover of Amazon.com. Google uses the amazon.com product suggestion program to make tailor made news for their subscribers. The new company is called Googlezon, and in two years time there is virtually no news organizations as we know them today. In the year 2111 The New York Times sues Googlezon for being a news monopoly but loses in a Supreme Court ruling obviously by that time Googlezon has bought the political favor of the people who appoint the Supreme Court. The court in the last years has usually ruled in favor of the political party of the President who appointed them. Microsoft tries to fight back against Googlezon and an epic news war occurs in the year 2010. By that time all of the duties of an editor are done by a computer and nearly all of the news coverage is done by freelance citizens. There is no ethics in journalism anymore, and without it we are lost.
The movie asks the question: Is there another way? Is there something better than a computer editor and news being selected for you because of the products that you view on Amazon? What if you were buying a joke gift, how can the computer know that? The computer cannot know that, the computer only knows what the programmers tell it to know. The programmers at this fictional Googlezon have too much power and too much control over the fourth estate and the citizens of 2014 America and the world are all the worse for it.
-Ryan Damon
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