Google, Contents, and Original Video
March 8, 2016
I read “Moon Shot: Google Teams with J.J. Abrams and XPrize for Space Documentary Series.” The nine part series will premier on YouTube and Google Play this month. The idea of the original programming from a search vendor makes sense if you buy into Cnet’s inclusion of fiction in its content stream. I have a tough time figuring out who sponsors what YouTube video and which technical write up in Cnet is marketing fiction already.
Confusing, right? Alternatively, who cares? Well, that’s why there is a sales oriented documentary. Google wants to sell tickets for a rocket ride. I learned about the J.J. Abrams’ confection:
Fittingly, it is about the Google Lunar XPrize, the competition that Google and the XPrize Foundation started back in 2007, which promises $30 million to the first team able to land a privately funded robotic rover on the moon and drive it around — making history in the process (until now, only a few government space agencies have managed to put rovers on the moon). The new documentary looks appropriately cosmic and stirring in its scope, profiling the dedicated dreamers and entrepreneurs of all 16 remaining teams in the competition as they inch closer to the goal (so far, only two teams have booked tickets on spacecraft actually set to launch soon, both in 2017).
I thought virtual reality would eliminate the boundary between what’s made up and what’s here and now. Wrong am I again.
Stephen E Arnold, March 8, 2016
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