The Iron Yuppie

There has been a realization that I've wanted to put into a post for a long time about the danger of the web that seems to be realized in this piece:

Come Dream With Me: Stirling Engines

The piece is a nice interview of a founder of a company who's building some technology about stirling engines. But it's just a work of fiction. The author discloses this at the top, but if you miss that disclaimer, for whatever reason, you could be under the impression that this was real. There's nothing wrong whatsoever with what the author did, but because the medium has yet to reach that level of distrust in our mind, it's very easy to overlook the disclaimer and move right into the piece. When we see something on the web, it FEELS real. Movies, television and books all feel the same as well, but, in those cases, at least there is some level of market dynamics that reduce the risk of just anyone posting something. The web does not have the same shackles and, as a result, every piece starts out with the same amount of "truth" to it, whether it's on CNN or Johnnyblogger.blogspot.com.