It is lovely, but slightly less lovely since you guys left (again).

I have strolled through that courtyard as well as a high school Senior, debating whether or not journalism was the path I wanted to take.

And yet, here I am, studying Journalism at the University of Missouri and watching EPIC 2014 in my first journalism class.

That may be the best couple of comments Snarkmarket has ever gotten! I love this blog!

I am actually really excited that you have been to Poynter. That gives you bonus points in my book.

But even more important, I was told that you are the one who wrote EPIC 2014. If this is true, would you mind if I asked you a few questions so that I can clear the air with many numerous topics discussed in my class. It's quite the controversy. Some say it wouldn't be all that bad if it happened, others say it would be detrimental to society. I'm still unsure as to all it says because there's so much information thrown at you in eight minutes. And 500 kids in one class throwing out their opinions gets kinda crazy.

You know what would help? Do you have a transcript of the video? So we can go over all it says verbatim. That'd be awesome.

There's a complete transcript available online here, complete with links for the historical sections of the video. This transcript also includes the last few lines on the downside of EPIC, which some of the others leave out.

Here's a transcript that somebody else on the web did -- it doesn't go all the way to the end, but close --

http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2004/11/29/summary_of_the_world_googlezon.htm

If you have any specific questions, drop 'em in the comments here and Matt and I will take a shot.

Re: whether EPIC would be good or bad... well, it's complicated, right? It would depend on the details: how it actually worked, & who was actually in control.

While I think the basic idea -- a rich, flexible network of reports that everyone can contribute to -- is great & exciting, I'd be pretty freaked by a future where one corporation controlled the entire flow of information.

Oh, nice. Use Matt's URL, not mine.

You're right, something we can all contribute to is exciting, but if this Googlezon program (or algorithm) stripped parts of stories from all over and made it to fit any person's taste, the news would be biased and skewed. No one would know the truth anymore. Not that very many do nowadays, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

We also noticed how you took on a 1984-esque approach to the presentation of EPIC 2014 what with the looking into the future and, even more, the name on the Googlezon ID you presented in the video is also the name of the main character in 1984. I'm guessing this was intended. Why did you decide on presenting it that way?

Also, one of the main reasons journlism has come about is to help society share in information that they cannot directly experience. We've gotten this far, but if something like EPIC were to come about, people would soon become narrow-minded again because everything would be at their fingertips on a computer screen. There'd be no reason for experiencing the outside world anymore. What's the point, right? If you can find everything in the comfort of your own home.

The New York Times goes offline, and becomes available only to 'the elite and the elderly'. But wouldn't EPIC only be available to the elite, as well? Realistically speaking, this couldn't happen in some areas. In Africa, some parts of Asia and Russia, there aren't enough resources and the economy is not strong enough to support such a provocative leap into techonology.

But most of all, where did EPIC fome from? What inspired its creation? How did it come about?