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It’s strange how the abundance of news shares some territory with the scarcity of news. #

Paolo Bacigalupi’s description of “news that you can trust” in a dictatorship parallels what’s happening with news in social media: who do you trust? #

With a new mix of Kulaap’s music from DJ Dao streaming over my stereo, I sit down at my little kitchen table, pour my coffee from its press pot, and open my tablet. #

The tablet is wondrous creation. In Laos, the paper was still a paper, physical, static, and empty of anything except the official news. Real news in our New Divine Kingdom did not come from newspapers,or from television, or from handsets or ear buds. It did not come from the net or feeds unless you trusted your neighbor or look over your shoulder at an Internet cafe and if you knew that there were no secret police sitting beside you, or an owner who would be able to identify you when they came around asking about the person who used that workstation over to communicate with the outside world. #

Real news came from whispered rumor, rated according to the trust you accorded the whisperer. Were they family? Did they have long history with you? #

The Gambler
© Paolo Bacigalupi 2008
In Fast Forward 2 / edited by Lou Anders. #

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 5th, 2010 at 5:56 pm and is filed under News Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Mots clés :news trust media social abundance scarcity bacigalupi