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"As the rate of technological development speeds up, the gap between science fiction and what we’re living now is getting narrower all the time."
- Richard Morgan

Citizen Journalism  
  The notion that ordinary people can make use of technological tools like cellphone cameras and the Internet to provide information.  

Can an ordinary individual influence a country?

"But what can a single person do to influence events of such magnitude and momentum?" One answer might surprise you. We'll shortly hand over these channels, on loan, to the Federation of Amateur Observation Special Interest Groups...

It may surprise many of you how much science relies on amateur observers, from bird-watchers, to meteor counters, to hobbyists with private weather stations. But now, with so many weird phenomena taking place worldwide, these amateur networks are truly coming into their own. It's privatte citizens, with sharp eyes and ready cameras, who are even now tracing patterns the big boys think they can keep secret from us..

We'll show them whose planet this is!

Technovelgy from Earth, by David Brin.
Published by Bantam in 1990
Additional resources -

This is a very early reference to this idea; when this novel was published, ordinary people had very little chance of having their individual two cents noticed outside of their usual social circle.

Today, of course, anyone can place their work and their thoughts before a global audience. You are viewing an example of citizen journalism; twenty years ago, someone without a professional organization behind him could scarcely have expected that fifty thousand people a day would come to read what he had to say.

See this related article - amateur innovators - this is your century!.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Earth
  More Ideas and Technology by David Brin
  Tech news articles related to Earth
  Tech news articles related to works by David Brin

Citizen Journalism-related news articles:
  - Instant Journalists: Ordinary People With Cell Phones

Articles related to Culture
Warfare Goes Underground In Ukraine
The Wind Phone Calls Those Who Have Passed On
Instant Journalists: Ordinary People With Cell Phones
Meta's Horizon Studio's Unique Avatars From Text Prompts

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Science Fiction in the News

You Will Eat The Cookies Made From Plastic...
'Our planes are going to start bringing in bales of discarded plastics...'

It's A Giant Robot! You Reporters Have Been Warned!
'... completely forgetting the ship at sight of the awesome figure and great head of the giant Gaut...'

Birds Learn To Sing Pictures ala Frank Herbert's Distrans
'We will fight in the time of fighting.'

Tactile Skin Supplier Map
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'

Flock Stymied By 'Adversarial Fashion'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'

Orb Nomad Zero-Emission Electric Aircraft
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'

ICE Buys Shock Gloves Like Batman's
What else is the Caped Crusader using?

Factories In The Sky Will Surpass Those Of Earth
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'

Sleeper Drones Lie in Wait
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'

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