The time is coming, and is now here… When Gargoyles Will Speak.

Stop looking up!  The Gargoyles I speak about are on the street corners, in the bus stations, in the cubical beside you.  Traditionally, gargoyles are the stone masonry fixed on the steeples and butresses of ancient cathedrals and gothic architecture.  Their speech was the result of rain fall collecting in the roofs, running along the guttering, and flowing out through the mouths of these "holy devils".

But - in 1992 - all that changed.  Neal Stephenson took from his top shelf a bound and dusty manuscript titled "Snow Crash".  Following the normal process of publication & printing - the book was released to an eager public ready for the message hidden within the pages of his novel.

Stephenson made more than an allusion to the then fictional character - a Gargoyle.  The collectors, editors, and distributors of a socially networked grid of news & media.  Recorded as it happened, the news of the early 21st Century, was uploaded to the Net and distributed quickly to the masses.  Right, Wrong, Slanted, or Inaccurate didn't matter - this was news, it was fresh, and people searched it.

Sound Familiar?  The Gargoyles of the Early 21st Century have indeed begun to speak.  Take a look at what I mean… The real Gargoyles are truely taking to the streets and you and I are becoming the media of tomorrow…

MobiDogs reports on this exciting time in our own history with a brief profile on the creator of NowPublic.com.  They state - "I am a long-time fan of Neil Stephenson’s novel "Snow Crash" which has proven to be a very influential piece of fiction. Concepts from this novel often get quoted by industry influencers like Jay Allard, who apparently made Snow Crash required reading for his team as he headed up the Xbox 360 development effort. Leonard Brody is clearly a fan of this science fiction classic as well and he referred to it numerous times throughout his presentation. His presentation wrapped up with a prediction of a "Gargoyle Culture", both this prophecy and his latest business venture NowPublic.com appear to be based directly on one of the core themes from the futuristic world as described in Stephenson’s book.

The basic premise of a gargoyle in Snow Crash, for those of you who haven’t read it, is that in the information society of the future people will get paid for uploading data that they collect around them. In the story, the term gargoyle is used to describe a particular type of individual who takes the profession of data collection very seriously, so seriously that he fits his body with all the latest in sensor gear for gathering sound, video etc. Once covered with all this heavy gear, not only does the individual visually resemble a gargoyle, but it is advantageous for him to perch, like a gargoyle, someplace high above what is going on to observe and collect intelligence data that will be uploaded to the network.

Brody’s new venture is based on a concept of citizen journalism where everyday individuals use the cameras in their mobile phones to collect the news around them and upload it to the internet for others to consume, much like the characters in Snow Crash do. It doesn’t appear that NowPublic has the micro-payment and billing aspects of the idea online yet, however, if you are familiar with how popular Google’s Adsense program of sharing ad revenue with web site publishers has become, you can quickly appreciate how even more compelling it will be for people to upload information that they collect around them if they were paid each time the content they contributed was used."

NowPublic.com hosts my own Gargoyle like feed of local news and media at My Profile! What I See and Record, Will Become the News People Read …  I'll see you in the news!

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