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jayrosen:

Tim Pool, the man behind @TheOther99, is bringing the Max Headroom prophecy to life.

Max Headroom was a short-lived TV series from the 1980s, produced in the UK and aired in the US on ABC.

Set in a futuristic dystopia where a media oligarchy rules over everything, including a puppet government, the series was mainly about Edison Carter, a TV reporter who shoots his own video and heroically battles for truth and justice against the corporate overlords, including his bosses at Network 23. They hate him but they have to keep him on the air because he generates huge ratings by streaming stories live and bonding with the audience.

Carter is aided by his deskbound producer, Theora Jones, who has complete access to the datasphere on her computer and constant contact with Carter when he’s in the field. She helps direct him to where the story is and when the bad guys close in she is lightening fast on the keyboard.

Max Headrom is the name of Carter’s alter ego, a computer-generated version of Carter who becomes a ghost in the machine, living in the computer system and popping in at awkward moments.

The series was pre-Web. It anticipated today’s backpack journalism, live streaming and networked reporting. And all those things are coming together today in the work of Tim Pool, the live streamer and citizen journalist who is documenting Occupy Wall Street to a growing audience online. 

Edison Carter had Theora Jones watching out for him. Tim Pool has the users themselves. In many ways it’s Max Headroom come to life. 

I wrote about Pool (and about OWS as an API) at my main blog. See my post, Occupy PressThink: Tim Pool. 

(Photo of Tim Pool by Paintballbudd; Creative Commons license. Max Headroom image by gwdesq; Creative Commons license.)

5 months ago

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