British Newspaper Confuses Deus Ex With Real Life

from the augmented-fact-checking-needed dept

If you dig through a Techdirt search on augmentation, you'll return links for our ongoing Daily Dirt pieces and some interesting stuff about augmented reality. That kind of thing is all well and good, but fans of cyberpunk thrill-rides like me have something different in mind for ourselves when it comes to augments. We want the good stuff. You know, implanted HUD vision, mechanical servos in our leg joints that will make us jump like LeBron, maybe a gun-arm or two so we can savagely disperse justice on unsuspecting bad guys. Unfortunately, very little in the way of improvement in these fields has occurred.

Until now. I bring you the British tabloid, The Sun, and their amazing story about an augmented mechanical eyeball that, if associated material is to be believed, allows you to see through walls, color-codes friends and enemies, and permits telescopic zoom. Here's the reference from The Sun.

Oops. See, part of the reason that Sarif Industries' cybernetic implants are still in their infancy is that the company doesn't exist. Sarif Industries is a fictitious company from a cyberpunk video game, Deus Ex, set in a future Detroit. As Kotaku notes:

Granted, the folks behind The Sun don't really care that much about nonsense like "accuracy" or "making sure the news they report isn't actually from a video game." And yes, perhaps eyeball implants will indeed be common in 50 years. But they probably won't come from Sarif Industries.

Thank science for all the fact-checking our brick and mortar newspapers do. On the other hand, seriously, how much fact-checking is required to determine that no biomedical company producing what would be a ground-breaking achievement in augmentation exists in Detroit? I recognize that the Sun has a bit of a reputation for skipping out on pesky little things like "facts" in its reporting, but rewriting video games as fact seems to take things to a different level.

Filed Under: deus ex, journalism, real life, tabloids, the sun, uk, video games
Companies: the sun

UK Tabloid Known For Publishing Naked Photos Complains About The Harm Of Porn Online

from the that's-what-we-call-hypocrisy dept

Folks who have been online for a while probably recall the infamous Rimm Report from back in 1995, which was the first mainstream attempt to claim that evil "cyberporn" (yes, that's the word they used) was taking over the internet and threatening children everywhere. Of course, that report was based on ridiculously faulty research, but many have sustained this moral panic that online porn simply must be evil. Enter UK tabloid The Daily Mail, who apparently has decided that this is an issue that needs attention, in the form of some moral panic reporting based on a couple of loosely sourced anecdotes. The story appears to be written by the mother of a kid who's going through the initial stages of teenagerdom/puberty, and his mother can't handle it, so she blames the kid's changes on access to porn online.

Martin Robbins, over at the Guardian does a pitch perfect satire in response, mocking The Daily Mail's article. Here's just a snippet:

As an infant, I was exposed to breasts almost every single day. Thirty years later, breasts have taken over my life. Not a day goes by without some stray breast seeping into my consciousness. Occasionally I catch myself glancing at the breasts of my female friends, and I habitually pour milk all over my cornflakes. Worse, breasts have served as a gateway drug for vaginas.

I used to think I was alone, but extensive new research in the form of almost three anecdotes published by the Daily Mail - a seedy gossip website specializing in celebrity erotica, catering to men too old to buy Nuts and too married to run up hard-to-explain credit card charges on proper porn - has revealed the devastating impact that breasts have been having on other young children.

Each tragic case of boob trauma follows the same remarkable pattern. An ordinary little boy approaching his teenage years suddenly starts to change his behaviour: becoming withdrawn and moody and mysteriously growing about six inches in height. Detailed investigation of the child's browser history reveals that the cause is not the rough patch the parents have been going through, a recent change of schools, or puberty; but an addiction to online porn.

Of course, even more amusing is that Robbins goes on to point out that The Daily Mail's moral panic against porn might take on slightly more credibility if the publication wasn't well known for publishing nude photos itself (the links in the next paragraph may be slightly NSFW depending on your work environment):

The Daily Mail makes money from posting pictures of scantily-clad women on the internet. Sometimes these women are topless. Sometimes they are completely naked. Often the images are captioned with breathy descriptions of 'cleavage', 'dangerous curves', 'thigh-skimming' dresses. Sometimes the images are of disturbingly young girls, accompanied with phrases like the infamous "all grown up."

It's only worth a moral panic if it's not about the publication in question making money, it seems. I recognize that the UK tabloid culture involves moral panic articles like the Daily Mail's all too often, but you have to wonder how anyone takes such things seriously when those same publications are publishing naked photos online itself.

Filed Under: porn, rimm report, tabloids, the daily mail, uk