What Todd takes for granted part 6

Much as the production of many goods has been moved from big factories to local 3-d printers the media has undergone a decentralization process as well. The current convention of television networks and movie studios has been replaced for the most part with on demand programing. The one exception to this is breaking news programing which is as always time sensitive.

Even the news media have undergone a major shift. The exposure of collusion between certain political parties and major news outlets by independent news blog organizations in the decade before the second civil war led to major public distrust in the traditional news outlets. Unfortunately the need that most news blogs have to sell advertizing leads to at least as much biased journalism as there ever was under the old system. On a positive note though the increase in the number of available news outlets makes it possible for a savvy observer to identify bias much more readily than they could when there were fewer outlets to choose from.

On the entertainment side of things increases in computer power and crowd-funding has almost completely killed off major film and movie studios. It is now possible for an average portable computer to produce such high quality visual effects that anyone with the talent and the right software can make something that fifty years before would have required a major studio to provide. Consequently it is much easier for gifted amateur filmmakers to find and keep an audience. Unfortunately it's also much easier for less talented filmmakers to produce release and distribute crap. Generally though the highest quality products tend to get more online chatter and ultimately more revenue but this is not universal. Sometimes things that are bad are able to get an audience anyway.

This boon to filmmakers is an even bigger boon to would be actors. Many an actor now starts working for a very low wage or even for free on some minor project and if they are talented enough, find themselves receiving offers for more lucrative jobs from more prosperous filmmakers.

Another effect of the advances in technology has been the near demise of the movie theatre. Already suffering with the advent of large screen home theatre systems the final nail in their coffin was the advent of virtual and augmented reality systems that could give any audience a "screen" large as they could want with even more enhancements than any theatre could provide. For example a viewer in V.R. can enjoy all the smells along with the sights and sounds of the show and even reach out and touch elements of the three dimensional presentation.

Then of course there are the fully interactive games that allow the viewer to be a full participant in the story in ways that make modern video games look tame in comparison.