Epic 2014
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN returns to it as an uncannily prescient prediction of tech consolidation and AI-written, personalized news.
What it is
Epic 2014 is a short science-fiction film that imagines the media landscape merging into a personalized, computer-generated news service. It is a fictional history of 'Googlezon' and the decline of traditional newspapers.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2021 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec kragen · 2023-12 · on “NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances”
this was predicted in the very influential epic 2014 video in 02004 [this video] (the original is flash and has thus been consigned to the memory hole, so we are left with this poor-quality conversion) 36": 'however, the press as you know it has ceased to exist' 40": '20th-century news organizations are an afterthought; a lonely remnant of a not-too-distant past' 2'11": 'also in 2002, google launches google news, a news portal. news organizations cry foul. google news is edited entirely by computers' 5'13": 'the news wars of 2010 are notable for the fact that no actual news organizations take part. googlezon finally checkmates microsoft with a feature the software giant cannot match: using a new
Recommends duckmysick · 2026-04 · on “Google Broke Its Promise to Me. Now ICE Has My Data”
Does anyone else remember Epic 2014? It was a video made years ago that speculated about the future of the internet and media, with the end game being personalized news written by a computer. The timeline is off but the brand names are mostly the usual suspects. Rewatching it now gives me this uncanny feeling. [this video] [LINK]
Cites pgrote · 2021-01 · on “Robinhood Play Store listing went from 329K reviews to 180K in few hours”
I wish I could find it, but 10 years ago, probably longer now, there was a prescient video where there turned out to be only 4 tech companies left. Something like amazgooglesoft or something. The narrator had a deep voice and I think it was funded by a media company. Edit: Found it through the keywords, "old prediction video where amazon microsoft google buy everything" lol [this video]
Cites kragen · 2024-06 · on “The Rise and Fall of BNN Breaking, an AI-Generated News Outlet”
this was predicted in epic 2014 as a product of googlezon in 2010 [this video] > Googlezon finally checkmates Microsoft with a feature the software giant cannot match. Using a new algorithm, Googlezon's computers construct news stories, dynamically stripping sentences and facts from all content sources, and recombining them. The computer writes a new story for every user. it took a bit longer than we thought it would in 02004