And so it came to pass that two of the greatest modern pieces of popular art came to an end in the first few months of 2009. Accuse me of hyperbole, but that’s the bottom line with Battlestar Galactica and 100 Bullets. I stand before you accused of being a nerd, evidenced by my consumption of comic books and sci-fi. I humbly plead guilty.

To quickly catch up those in the dark: BSG is a sci-fi TV show that starts off with humanity facing extinction at the hands of their robotic creations. When looking into the deep dark eyes of Despair, how would we respond? The show has been heralded for its commentary on contemporary polarizing issues – the motivations of suicide bombers, the uneasy alliance between religion, military and government, or the hatred that fuels blatant racial discrimination. Producer Ron D. Moore presented such a nuanced view on what drives people to act in desperate situations that he (along with some of the cast) recently shared their opinions at the United Nations.

100 Bullets is a comic book series that began with a simple premise: if you’ve been wronged and have irrefutable proof that someone was responsible, what would you do with a gun, 100 rounds of ammunition and carte blanche? If a mysterious man gave you absolute power and control over someone’s life, what would you do? Writer Brian Azzarello and artist Eduardo Risso takes this concept and sends the reader spiralling into a shady world of conspiracies, crime families and shifting morals. A hundred issues later, a complicated story leaves me wondering about responsibility, the consequences of your actions and the notion the true colour of society is grey.

I really wanted to write about how sinking your teeth into either of these long-running serials will shatter your perceptions on the potential of sci-fi and comic books, about the unique ability of a storyteller to create fictional worlds that exist on the edge of reality, of the communities that sprout and inject new layers of understanding and knowledge. I’ve got pages of half-started thoughts and unfinished sentences as I struggle to extract some deeper meaning about the media that I have spent days of my life reading, watching and analyzing.

But you know what, sometimes a TV show about a rag-tag space fleet and a comic book about revenge  just entertains, allowing you to escape into the mindscape of master craftsmen. At the end of the day, it’s really about losing yourself in some serious storytelling.

My previous post ended with the question “So what does the digital medium give us?” Based on the continuum Okrent proposes, I believe it gives you a pulse on reality.

I think this becomes clearer when we try to answer the other question cited, “What’s the definition of the news they want?”

Basically, news is recent historical information that contains two components: facts and analysis. The facts are descriptions of events: gang violence leaves 4 dead, Les Habs win the Cup, President speaks at global forum etc. Facts are the basic ingredients; analysis is what gives each recipe its unique flavour. Analysis addresses the age-old question: “Why?” Connections between the facts uncovers a deeper meaning. Motivations of the actors involved laid bare provides perspective.

The traditional model to deliver news relied on a broadcast system where the flow of information went from the select few to the mass public. The newspapers & magazines, TV & radio stations controlled the information we consumed. They provide just one perspective - their analysis of the facts.

What’s important to understand is that analysis is the means to comprehend reality. Facts + Analysis = Understanding; understanding of the world, of the way people are, of what makes us tick. And the very act of consuming the “news” is an act of analysis itself. By accepting their analysis as another piece of information, it transforms into a fact, which becomes a part of my personal analysis. I can draw my conclusions based on the conclusions of the reporter.

Furthermore, what the Internet and digital media has done is eliminated the barrier between the few who possessed the means to provide news, and the many who wanted to consume. All of sudden, the facts are being collected via cellphone cameras, Twitter, and Google Earth, while anyone can provide analysis (this blog is proof enough).

Consequently, there’s a smorgasbord of information available for each of us to paint a picture of how we perceive reality. I’m continually constructing a paradigm to understand the world, modifying my equation with new pieces of information that challenge or confirm. Each of us doing this: creating our understanding of reality. Mine is no more right than yours, because my analysis is based on all of the facts I have encountered, which are different from all of the facts you have encountered.

Reality is the collective analysis that we’re conducting. Information is the blood that circulates the system of human experience, capturing our knowledge and understanding, and when digitized is stored in the ether of the Internet.

That’s the pulse of reality. It’s the heartbeat of the system called society.

So here’s the scene: I’m sitting in a cafe in Kuala Lumpur’s airport last summer, waiting for my flight to Bangkok, and I’m reading William Powers’ essay Hamlet’s Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal which dives into the numerous reasons why paper continues to have a firm grip on how we experience information. Of course, I’m flipping through this 75-page PDF on my laptop. Go figure.

Fast forward to a couple of days ago, I’m scanning the CBC mobile site on my iPod Touch when this headline pops out: “Print industry to worsen before any improvements: experts.” The train of thought that Powers had started in his piece continues here: while the tangible nature of paper is what allows us to focus solely on the information presented to us, it is fast becoming a less viable medium for newspapers, whose struggles are only more exacerbated with the overall economic downturn we’re experiencing. The death knells are tolling louder.

A comment that stuck out for me came from Toronto Star publisher John Cruickshank who asks “The issue, it seems to me, is not so much ‘Do people want newspapers?’ as ‘Do they want news?’ and ‘What’s the definition of the news they want?’” A similar sentiment was echoed in David Carr’s column in the New York Times in January, as he calls for an iTunes for news. Which is what Amazon’s Kindle 2 is supposed to achieve…eventually.

But I want to dig deeper into the 2 questions that Cruickshank raises, which I think are central to the existential dilemma that the media (used in its broadest sense) faces every morning as it stares with haggard eyes into the bathroom mirror. The first is easy to answer in my opinion: yes, people want news. We’ve been collectively fed a steady diet of what’s the latest breaking thing to hit the airwaves and streets. We’ve accustomed ourselves to accept this idea that with tomorrow’s dawn, something new will be waiting for us - shoes, video games, news.

Essentially what we’re craving for is information - in whatever shape, size or colour it arrives in. And that’s why the second question is a tougher nut to crack, and deserves a blog post all of its own. But I’ll leave you with a beautiful line to ponder from Daniel Okrent’s Digital Journalist editorial from February 200, titled The Death of Print?:

“A newspaper gives you timeliness, a magazine perspective, a book lasting value. “

So what does the digital medium give us?

After my last post, I found this little ditty online…exactly the sort of thinking I’m advocating… “What Obama could learn from Mozilla“

Enjoy!

Oh my god, I’m back again…and I’ll do my best to keep the pop culture references to a bare minimum. So much has happened since we last danced, so I’ll try to keep pace with all of this change.

I attended Volunteer Toronto’s free screening of Us Now, a quaint UK documentary about the effectiveness of the latest iteration of mob rule thru technology - crowd sourcing. Collective decision making and moderation by a community of like-minded individuals are demonstrated to have some measure of success, so naturally, can the same work for government?

I use the word “quaint” because of the inherent failure of documentaries trying to capture the new, fast paced media of online social networking tools. It’s like pre-fab Top 40 pop songs - it has a hook that pulls you in slightly, but you quickly realize that there’s not enough substance, not enough meat to sink your teeth into. Like Heraclitus’ river, things are constantly changing and it’s nigh impossible to adequately capture the zeitgeist of the information age in an antiquated media format.

(Disclaimer: I love documentaries as an art form, but they work best for me when I’m detached from the subject matter, or have at least a superficial understanding of the topic. Like base jumping, Antarctica, or Iran’s underground culture.)

But back to the question: are we ready for the beta launch of Government 2.0? Don Tapscott certainly thinks so, but where I differ from him is that social media doesn’t put it within reach. In order for a reality where every citizen places value in their ability to contribute to decision-making, we need to upgrade the operating system. I’m talking about a full blown, rewriting of the basic underlying software that governs our social interactions.

Our code is buggy, a patchwork of faulty logic covered up with security updates, where inputs rarely result in the right output and where hackers are gaming the system. I’m no programmer, but I see the system we have now akin to the Windows OS - it works just enough so that everyone who uses it is mildly satisfied.

It’s here that I agree the basic argument that the film makes - that trust in your peers is the building block for smart decisions that place the common good above the individual. I trust that your contribution is a sensible one, that you’ve based it on measured thinking and your thought through the eventual impact of your actions. By thinking of everyone, I help myself.

A new social contract has to be written, to reshape our attitude towards one another.  Once that is done, only then can we begin the Government 2.0 project. And it is possible - in the world of capitalism, thinkers like Peter Barnes and Umair Haque are charting out a roadmap that might haul us out of the quagmire we find ourselves in. The application may be slightly different, but the sentiment is still the same - the rules are changing, and if we don’t respond in kind, humanity = FAIL.