20 million channels and nothing on…
The Media corporations of the 27th century have their origin in the Television and Radio companies of the 20th century, merged with the internet media of the 21st and the Integrated Mobile platform of the 22nd. The Corporation provide information, news, entertainment, culture, knowledge, education and power to each of the 20 billion humans on the planet.
What are the 27th century media? Let’s first look at how the content is broadcast to the people.
After experiments with direct neural interfaces, the disastrous results of plugging people’s brains directly into a computer/media network was realized and outlawed in the 25th century. Today, some people still undergo implantation of a DNI, but the system is used mainly for illicit and illegal activities. Instead, a more “gentle” implantation procedure was developped by interfacing not directly with the brain but with the sensory organs of signal paths. Instead of one central neural implant, people are now implanted with individual sensory broadcast devices. Auditory implants usually sit inside the Cochlea, visual implants are grafted unto the optical nerve, smell and taste implants are implanted in the nose. Tactile signals are the most difficult, and are implanted at the back of the neck, near the cerebellum. Controls for this system are implanted under the skin of the inside of the forearm, and the antenna for the system is usually implanted between the forearm bones.
This system allows the person to receive all sorts of sensory information, from music and talk radio to fully immersive sound and visual experiences. It can be used to communicate with others through the network, and to chose the level of involvement of the conversation, just sound, sound and image (A small camera is mounted with the forearm display), or the full sensory system. Many people have taken to send touch messages or smell messages, which can give a lot of information.
The Corporations provide professionally produced content, and constantly monitor the media use and habits of people, in order to tailor each person’s experience and advertisement exposure to his needs. Paying services provide advertisement-free airtime, and a lot of user-generated content is also advertisement free. The main role however, of the Corporations, is to provide Bandwidth to all. Colossal infrastructures have been put together to allow 20 billion people full access to the network.
By controlling bandwidth, the Corporations effectively control the world, since all business and policy is conducted through the Network, and that most human contacts are too, strictly networked.
Network addiction is universal, and very few people can sanely go off the network for more than a few hours. I read somewhere that information is to humans what the bright spot of light from a laser pointer is to a cat. The cat is hardwired to chase bright moving things. That’s how they catch birds and mice, and survive. But there is nothing in nature remotely close to a laser pointer, so the cat responds to it by chasing it, uncontrollably, and cannot do otherwise. Humans are hardwired as information gatherers, and so the network is a giant laser pointer for humanity: the irresistible unnatural thing that we just cannot move away from…
Language
There are still many regional languages, but the language known as Standard Earth English is understood and spoken by a vast majority of the population, but on earth and around the solar system. The relative isolation of the outer Worlds mean that their language has evolved in different directions, and the Jovian English is quite different from the Earth English. The Media corporation mostly provide content in Standard Earth English, and only a small portion of the information present on the Network is translated into the local languages. However, machine translations into any language, although far from perfect, allows access to all information in all languages.
