Our Millennial generation may be headed for mass information overload by the year 2040 — we’ll soon be consuming ‘breaking news’ by the nanosecond via ‘twitchips’ implanted on the palm-sides of our wrists, I’m sure — at which point our heads collectively will go kaboom, kind of like in the horror movie Scanners. (NSFW I guess, but these are real B-rate special effects that cannot be taken seriously.)
In-line with the untenable trend, Shepard Smith this week debuted the ‘Fox News Deck’, a hi-tech newsroom reminiscent of the new Starship Enterprise bridge operated by the cast of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Seated, his staff will use ‘Big Area Touchscreens’, or ‘BATS’ — giant 55-inch iPad-like monitors — to sift through ‘all vetted sources’ and validate news items, play Words with Friends, etc. Smith himself will lord over a 38-foot-long video wall, operable by Wii remote or something close to, showing that America’s commitment to supersizing doesn’t just come with fries.
To be sure, this is forward-thinking stuff, and whatever the fate of the ‘deck’, it surely foreshadows the future of television news consumption; the all-hell-breaks-loose moment was 3-D will.I.am, anyway, and Fox’s use of integrated storytelling is more focused and useful than that.
But to look past the rank silliness of the deck’s appearance and methods would make for a missed opportunity, which is why we have Stephen Colbert on the nights he’s lampooning culture and not just the Right.
The man can speak for the hyperbole in all of us, and in debuting the ‘Colbert Info News Veranda’ Thursday night, he showed us that it’s not just about seamlessly streaming electronic resources to inform America — it’s about taking advantage of the flesh and blood and bot of this world, too.
Watch below:
