Flashmobbing the news…
Ok, a couple of days ago, I had something of an epiphany about how I find out about things… I originally heard about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center from a friend via an email – and it took quite a bit of messing about but we at the office were able to watch the broadcast news on my office computer via a remote desktop to the video capture on my computer at home – it wasn’t great viewing – but we were able to see it… fast forward plenty of years and I’m sitting at my computer and checking my Twitter feed and notice in the tag cloud that there is something about a train wreck in DC… In the strangest way, before any of the ‘official news’ outlets are picking it up, I’m hearing about news that is amazingly accurate – if taken in this larger scale, it starts looking a lot like Asimov’s Psychohistory from the Foundation series
One of the guys I work with and I were discussing how this real-time access to the crowd, in this case, via Twitter, is amazing in how it can aggregate together and produce a picture that is remarkably accurate. Of course, the flip side is – it can be totally inaccurate, too – buyer beware, I guess Harrison Ford is glad they were wrong.
So it was with a slight bit of amazement that I saw floating in the tag cloud: Jackson and Dead. WTF?! A couple of clicks later and I’m sitting there just a little bit stunned.
When did the 80’s start dying? In a matter of days, three icons of my 80’s life have ceased to exist in the mortal plane (Not to mention they are STILL planning on remaking the A-Team – don’t get me started on that).
It’s just all very unsettling some days…