The questions asked in the book were: A) “How much television do you watch today?” B) “How has technology influenced your current viewing habits?” and C) “How could television be used to improve our social and political life?” The short answers are as follows: A) Almost none, B) It has pushed me away from television, and C) many ways, but the most obvious one is to turn the “boob tube” off. The real answers, of course, are obviously more complex and detailed.
Personally, as technology experts, my girlfriend and I own a wide array of visual media devices. In my home, one would find a 32” Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) set, a 50” Digital Light Projection (DLP) set, and a 20” Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) set. The 32” LCD in my living room is almost exclusively for video games and sports, the 20” CRT is for my four year old daughter to watch educational television and DVDs, as well as to use some low-end digital art equipment, and the 50” DLP is sadly, a pet repair project that is currently incomplete. Augmenting that total, my living room also contains 6 20” LCD monitors connected to two PCs, three screens for my girlfriend and I apiece, as well as a 14” laptop PC. If cell phones, tablets and other media devices are included, my living room contains a total of 19.4 square feet of screen at any given time. My personal PC is capable of running up to 6 monitors, each with a hypothetical top-end size of roughly 50”. There is plenty of media consumption in my household. The crux of the question, however, is about television, the prevalence of which is nominal at best. There are several reasons behind this, but the main driver is that some people, such as myself and my inamorata, simply desire a more interactive form of entertainment.
There are some experiences on television that are hard to replicate elsewhere, such as sporting events and educational programming, that are frequently watched on our tvs. That said, when it is not football or baseball season, the tv rarely has a reason to be on unless my daughter has the remote. Exacerbating the lack of tv is that the favored sports teams of the house reside in Tampa, Florida, and Seattle, Washington, which are just a bit outside local broadcasts. Also, because of our general apathy for traditional, advertisement-choked programming and a love of streaming on-demand from the internet combined with powerful ad-blocking software, we have thus far fought the notion that television is something worth being paid for. Compounding matters farther is that a large swath of programming is aimed squarely away from the intellectual demographic. Since Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” hit the airwaves, there has been very little in the way of mainstream intellectual and scientific programming. Unfortunately pandering to the basest creatures of the audience has become the norm, instead of trying to uplift them into a more civilized culture. Long story short, I have long wanted to repay the creators of “Jersey Shore” for the feeling I get whenever I see a snippet thereof: I would be happy to saw the tops of their heads off and vomit directly into their brainpans to emulate the relentless disgust, loathing, and anger at the anti-intellectualism that they provide. The same could be said of essentially all “reality” programming.
Moving on from that delightful imagery leads us to the next question, and the answer to said question is simple: technology has driven me, and folks like me, to consume media in heretofore never seen quantities. Movies, music, sports, and even talk radio programming have been supplanted by streaming, on-demand highlights and replays, and podcasts. Many news services around the world even offer essentially ad-free streaming, such as MSNBC, CNN, Sky News and Al-Jazeera. Oddly, a member of that internet-savvy crowd is the notoriously anti-progressive Fox News, which is both humorous and worrying. Highlights of sports can be seen strewn across the internet like reflectors on the highway, and one can even find full games, given a little bit of guile or a subscription fee. Weather and news are omnipresent, on the fronts of hundreds of pages, and in both real-time and from an absurd amount of angles. Even full shows, if one were to look for them, can be found on streaming services like Hulu and Netflix, and clips from them are almost impossible to miss. It is understood that not everyone possesses the tech-savvy abilities of the geek such as myself, and I have literally been accused of black magic because of my prowess in technology, which is far from the upper echelons of the technologically elite. That said, technology has changed my consumption of all media by making everything accessible all the time, and by constantly evolving into an omnipresent, ever-ready, inexhaustible font of information.
Our third question relies on that font of information in that the best way to improve our social and political lives is to research. Everything can be researched, and even a cursory glance over the internet will tell anyone that the information therein is that of a vast multitude in nature. While expertise is often not offered freely, the basics of any kind of art, skill, trade, or craft is to be found in only a few keystrokes. The state of socially and intellectually mind-expanding programming is atrocious at best. Once upon a time, the History channel actually showed programs about history, surely a novel idea that its namesake would be followed, but those days are long gone. The current lineup of shows includes such wonders as an insane conspiracy theorist disguised as a spray-tanned, wild haired Greek “philosopher,” untold legions of reality shows starring people from the bayou, and dramatizations of extremely difficult professions. Unfortunately, other once proud intellectual bastions in the sea of stupidity, such as the Discovery channel and the National Geographic channel, have fallen prey to the same pandering as every other channel. Truth be told, some of the most intellectually stimulating programs come in the form of cooking shows and sort-of-science shows disguised as “fun” programming, such as “Sports Science,” “How It’s Made,” and “Mythbusters.”
To tackle the second part of the question, one needs to simply shut off unfiltered broadcasts. During election campaign seasons, our television and radio are so inundated with political advertising that all messages that a candidate may have are lost amongst the noise and attacks. At the very least, one is able to search for both a message that appeals to a specific demographic and cold, hard facts on the internet, although finding the latter is much more rare than the former. Personally, I ignore almost all political advertising, unless it contains a colossal blunder that I can enjoy ridiculing, and with the increasingly hostile rhetoric between parties, I have more than my fair share of chuckles each election cycle. To capture my attention, all a political ad would need to do is state the positions of the candidate clearly, and possibly outline a brief plan for their proposed term in office. Until the day when political transparency is again valued, however, I and many more like me will be tuning out.
Essentially speaking, technology is the driving force of change behind the information revolution we are currently experiencing, and as technology becomes faster, more powerful, and less expensive, this influence will grow exponentially. Folks like me have come to nearly completely abandon unfiltered broadcasts. Even the stereo in my car has a USB port for listening to exactly the music I want with no interruption or advertising, and much of the information and entertainment I desire is freely available online. Television, for what it’s worth, has simply become another hiss of static in the background noise of life, and for folks like me, that hiss is slowly being abandoned for the crystal clarity of intellectual honesty.
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