When Fox published a video of its new broadcast newsroom — the Fox News Deck — yesterday, more than one (in fact, more like a dozen) journo-nerds immediately wondered whether we had all been transported aboard a Starfleet vessel.

The Enterprise is real an Shepard Smith is its captain http://t.co/JYw1SrId0Z

— Jared Keller (@jaredbkeller) October 7, 2013

I actually kinda like it. Looks like the concept for the bridge of a starship #myTabletIsBiggerThanYours http://t.co/Jewz1QzMom via @verge

— Michael Sitter (@M_Sitter) October 7, 2013

Like the bridge of the Enterprise. RT @BuzzFeedPol: Fox News' Futuristic New "News Deck" Is Like Whoa http://t.co/7PyvOXu1jh

— Sterling Beard (@SterlingCBeard) October 7, 2013

The guffaws across the Internet were loud and long. The set features giant tablets with 55-inch screens called BATs — big-area touch screens. (“Area,” sure) There’s a 38-foot-long video wall that host Shepard Smith controls with a wand, causing story images to zoom around him like in a whirlwind of news. In the video that announced this “revolutionary” advancement, we see a floor dotted with dapper looking young producers — called “information specialists” — whose job it is to sift through streams of information from Twitter and beyond, organizing the data into columns of “Investigating” and “Verified.”

Using cutting edge computer programs on 55-inch tablets Fox News' information specialists can view 4 tweets at a time pic.twitter.com/byMybVMbWM

— Dick Wisdom (@nostrich) October 7, 2013

40 reporters manipulating enormous twitter clients with their fists is EXACTLY what my gparents think the internet is http://t.co/B3MfPK1nLC

— John Herrman (@jwherrman) October 7, 2013

At any time, Smith tells us, what’s happening on those enormous tablets can be broadcast as news breaks or new information is uncovered, offering what I imagine to be an experience much like watching over someone’s shoulder as they check Twitter.

But there’s something about Fox’s use of the rhetoric of verification that makes it very 2013. The rise of fact-checking outlets like PolitiFact; social media’s endless stream of information, some true, some not; the always-on flows of online news; the filter bubble: All of these reflect a time when news is defined in the popular imagination both by its ubiquity and its unreliability. Fox News — originators of “We Report, You Decide” and easy target for accuracy concerns — has decided that the time is right to make the TV world reflect a vision of the online one.

I think FOX NEWS just paid a lot of money making TWEETDECK look fancy: http://t.co/MBhDNhEnUF

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 7, 2013