I tire of the news of the world, I have been looking at it for too long and suddenly I had a spark. I was looking at some library apparently in Greece and it had a globe, not the one I show you now.
A globe by by any other name remains a sphere and that was when a few ideas hit me at the same time. You see, some ‘undermine’ or ‘undervalue’ geospatial intelligence, but that is exactly where the new news needs to go. Consider a sphere and that sphere is like the top of a tablet. We can interact with this and it is already possible to do that. We can look at a globe and see what is happening out there and we can interact with these events and show them on our tablet, our mobile or our computer. And we can select what news we get, in most cases we are subscribed to it and out paper gets us the information with icons on our globe, which is also linked to our devices and we see the events we are connected to. So in the home and in the office we do not have a sizable globe, but we have a smaller one.
And it has the same function, but it goes further. Geospatial news can be shown on a TV, or one of those new paper thin displays, we used to call them maps and they are still that, but there is a difference. Local government has their own maps, shown on a display, optionally also shown in a home with a set focal point of a local map. For example someone in Riyadh might merely see the initial news of Saudi Arabia or Riyadh Province, or even merely Riyadh. Events that will pop up on this maps, other settings like the Netherlands, South Holland, or perhaps Delft, Rotterdam or The Hague. And this already exists. The news is given with connected metadata and we merely don’t think of that, but apart from the new TV (which is already out there (old ones work too) and the globes, which is al based on existing technology is out there, mere merely never refocused to this optional standard, because the newspapers like selling news papers. But digital data transformed that and it is time that the news is altered accordingly. I reckon that the first ones being Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera, BBC, and a few more will start offering this and soon enough others will follow. And I get that most of them will offer this in a subscription, optionally linked to their newspaper like Aftonbladet, Die Welt, or Le Monde. There are many providers and so many options to see rising to the occasion and the news needs to evolve if they want to exist tomorrow (its not that immediate a risk).
And with the new displays, the settings for local governments become more and more pressing and they will want to see these geospatial presentations in their government buildings, because we all think global, but it is all a collection of local news. And that is where the next technology comes from and that is where we need to look.
I think that this new setting of news will catch on, because in the end we are all local lifers in a global community and the term ‘Think local act global’ has been taken out of proportions by some to make their global footprint more distinct, but in all this we forgot the local person and he cares about what happens around him/her, so why not cater to that because news that is read by the 1.17 people in Amsterdam is still news worthy of being read and there is every indication that this will transfer to a much larger audience, because these people have friends and family optionally not in the Netherlands. Same could be said of all the 8 billion out there.
Well that is all I have to say on the subject. It was nice getting my noggin in a more creative setting, I missed that. So who will start this setting? I wonder how much longer other news agencies will try too hold onto the old phase and how they will be replaced by the news givers with a much larger scope. And the fun part? Advertisers will likely fail here, no one is interested in that and they will be barred to a much larger degree and this who try will drag the media not wanting to ‘separate’ news from advertisement with them, as such I will get two bangs for one shot. Lucky me. Have a great day.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 