The New York Times has grabbed on to the flashy tag "Sofa Wars" to describe what's happening right before our digitalized eyes. To be more precise -- the many ingenious digital ways in which entertainment moguls have unleashed their scientific brigades to find and promote new ways to keep us glued to our sofas...!
You have to be over 70 to have even a faint recollection of the simplicity of 5-channel television. That's when you came home at night, had dinner, and then sat with 5 channel choices, no cable, no satellite, no on-demand, no DVR, no programming after midnight, and -- shock of shocks -- no remote from which you could sit on your sofa commanding all the digital powers of the cosmos.
Google now wants a piece of the action, along with the other on-line services that can bring to our sofa thousands of network re-broadcasts...movies,,,,videos...music...news...video-phone calling....and whatever current gore and gossip our libidos crave.
What Sofa Wars are all about is NOT the value of technological advancement. Or informational outreach. Or instant communication with our world and its many peoples and ideas. Most everyone applauds these. What the Sofa Wars are really all about is the value of passivity!
Adults today frequently chide kids for being too passive with all their video/phone diversions. "Get out and breath some fresh air," we instruct them. Meanwhile, back on the sofa, mom and dad and just about everyone else may -- in evolutionary-time -- be growing bigger buttocks and smaller brains as we become the passive receptacles of what the Great God Screen aims daily and directly into our sensorium.
I mean, even Galileo, Newton and Einstein left their virtual laboratories at times.You know -- just to remember what [dare I say it? ] the actual world still looked and smelled like....
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It's been coming for a long time. Now what?
ReplyDeleteGood points made, Jack. Like you, I also remember the times before all these Television channels, and even [horror of horrors] before Computers.
ReplyDeleteIts very hard to even think of these times nowadays, and our children would be lost without the TV screen in the corner of the room.
I have noticed that the attention span of modern children is getting less than a Goldfish nowadays, and I wonder if TV and Computers are a part of the problem ?
In my day, I used to use my imagination to make up a story with just little bits of scrap wood or bits of metal, and play for hours in a world of my own.
Nowadays, imagination is a dirty word, and we all just sit watching a screen, which even stops a normal conversation between the adults, and the children. So, children also have lost the art of being able to think for themselves. There is also a limit to what children are able to remember, unless its something about some new Computer game, in which they are experts.
Though most TV programms are mind destroying, when the TV breaks down and stops working, we are lost. We notice the silence, and we feel that a major part of our lives is missing, and our homes feel empty without a flickering screen in the rooms.
We don't notice how much TV & Computers are a part of our modern lives, until they are not there.
This is a worry to people of my age.
We have all lost something important, without knowing we have lost it.
Reading a Good Book, seems old fashioned now, and children no longer are able to concentrate long enough to even start a book, never mind finish it, unless it has pictures with limited words. So, TV and Computers have destroyed the joy of just sitting in a room, and getting 'lost' in a good book.
Children and young Adults always say that they have 'nothing to do', so they hang about on street corners, and get into trouble. And yet, their world is full of wonders, but they no longer have the imagination to see them.
We, the older generation, tut-tut at them, and yet, we are also sucked into the mass system of brain-dead TV, and leave our sets switched on, even though nobody is looking at it, but turn it off, and there are screams of horror. Its as if an old friend has left the room, even though while its on, its ignored by the adults, and the children just sit there watching with blank eyes.
Families no longer 'talk' to each other, unless its about something on the news, and even then, it has to be something as dramatic as 9/11, or something that may have happened in our area and affects us.
So, in a way, TV has also removed our ability to feel horror, because our TV movies are just full of it, so 'real' life horror on the News, is just thought of in the same way, as fictional horrors in our TV Films, unless, as I said above, its something very big going on, and even then, its on the News so much, and so often, that we are no longer able to 'feel' anything about it, except maybe mention it...in passing each other on the stairs, or on our way to work, or to somebody at work, and even then, unless it could affect us, its forgotten.
However, having said all that, with all its bad points, TV and Computers, are with us, we cannot un-invent them, and they can be used for good things. They give us a mass of information, at our finger tips, they entertain us, and can be used to add to our imagination, and make our World even nicer, but, we need to be able to get back our self-control. We need more programms that give us facts about our world, and good clever movies, with good acters, telling good stories, and stories with a message. Stories with less violence, and a message showing right from wrong, and not making hero's of violent drug addicts and mass murderers. A little like the old days, when Films had humour, and drama, and shock of shocks, a Story!
[Now lets see...Whats on the Television ?]
Yeah, Google and others want more broadband for things you mentioned. And the FCC wants to sell more and more space to these people that is now used for wireless mics so important for major sports, casino showrooms, Hollywood, Theme parks, TV production, Broadway, Churches, major tours, even political debates, all the same technology. Needless to say, I OBJECT to these kind of sell-outs.
ReplyDeleteFellas ~ We are each of an age, and so we see this pretty much the same way. Technology is great so long as it's used for great things, not simply MORE things. It's also true that the younger generation can never really know what we're talking about. Just like, I suppose, we were when our parents' generation spoke.
ReplyDeleteAlas, humanity just takes so damn long to learn things!