Groundhog Day

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's been one of those weeks. First we had the tremor from the Qeshm earthquake and then Google's Driverless Car.

The link?

Well, those few weird moments of seeming terrestrial liquefaction having been enjoyed, I then got to watch Gulf News tweeting that it was going to report on the thing I had just experienced as the rest of Twitter shared its rainbow reaction. As if I'm going to put my life on hold to wait for GN's report. The next day, almost 24 hours after I had watched friends and Twitter in general record their reactions to the event, I get to see news stories about the thing I had lived through the day before.

I had sort of moved on, actually. Including a wander around the internet to research a blog post in which I learned more about the incident and the factors behind it than the Gulf News story - that I hadn't been waiting for, funnily enough - eventually told me. Context and analysis? Don't make me laugh, cocky...

And then yesterday opened with news reports about Google's driverless car, a project most of the people I know had been aware of for some months. Things had moved on and Google had released pictures of its prototype 'level four' car - no steering wheel at all for you, matey. The news online had broken the day before, Google's release went out on the 27th May (Tuesday) and most online outlets led with the story yesterday first thing. So listening to the Business Breakfast on Dubai Eye Radio this morning, it was odd to hear some shouty Americans on Bloomberg being played out. A sort of strange, layered iterative experience - the presenters played a recording of Bloomberg playing a recording of an interview with Sergei Brin.

So I get to hear a recording of a recording of a person talking about the news I knew and saw the day before.

This sort of thing is happening so frequently now, I'm losing track of what day it is. I keep looking to the future only to find mainstream media dragging me back to the past.

Odd.