June 1st, 2008
More credit where credit is due: I was alerted to this provocative
May 2008 column on Slate.com by
Bob Sacks in his Heard on the Web —
Media Intelligence newsletter.
Back in the prehistoric era, i.e. 1993, mega-bestselling
author Michael Crichton wrote an article for Wired magazine called Mediasaurus.
In the article he made several predictions, expanding from the premise stated
in his first paragraph, “To my mind, it is likely that what we now understand
as the mass media will be gone within ten years. Vanished, without a trace.â€Â
Jack Shafer, Slate‘s “editor at large,” revisits those
predictions with Crichton, as well as referencing his earlier visit with Crichton in the same
subject in 2002. When challenged that as of 2002 his predictions appeared still
far from accurate, Crichton responded: “assume that nobody can predict the
future well. But in this particular case, I doubt I’m wrong; it’s just too
early.”
Crichton complains bitterly (as many other commentators
have noted) that the decline of newspapers and television are not simply
because of the Web alternative, but also the ever-decreasing quality of those
media.
Shafer notes Crichton’s belief that “it will take a media
visionary, somebody like Ted Turner — to create the high-quality information
service he foresaw in his 1993 essay. In addition to building the service, the
visionary will also have to convince news consumers that they need it.”
