It’s said that religion is opium for the masses. Yeah I know we’ve all hear that before, so is television our next-gen opium? I’m not sure, but I’m coming to think like Morpheus in The Matrix, “It’s a cage for your mind!” One month down, and I’ve missed the TV, but only like a crack fiend misses a hit. Okay not that much but you get the idea.
Now it’s not like I haven’t found ways to watch online, and really that’s the point. As we all know more and more content is going online and just like in The Minority Report, one day the line between standard broadcast and online will be just as blurred as the difference between a truck and one of those Chevy Avalanche’s. Not to say we won’t know the difference, but we won’t care. In-fact I just installed Skype, I know … I know a little late to the game, but when I found out my mom uses Skype I finally installed it. I told my wife all about how my mom Skype’s friends in England, my friend uses it to talk with clients about their web sites, and that we’re a little last to the show. Shortly after in a walk around the block with the dog, my wife and I were chatting about what Skype means in the broader sense. Being the big thinking I am, I started asking questions, will we want to trade the mobility of a cordless phone for the stationary visual experience of a Skype phone? The simple answer is no. I put a headset on many times when using the old phone just so I can move about the house and work while talking to friends and family.
So if we’re not standing in front of the Skype box what will we be showing or what will people be looking at? A slide show of our last vacation, the latest videos from YouTube, maybe a playlist of songs we have saved on iTunes. I’m not sure for certain but the possibility are endless in this “new” world and it’s all due to one thing. The rise of social media, The Social Bubble, the social revolution as some are calling it. The need to check our Facebook status before we see what the weathers going to be like, or update Twitter before we take off to the store. So I’m left asking myself a question with all these social applications why are we not embracing Skype? Why are we not talking face to face as much as we are posting and tweeting?
This leads me back to the point, we’ve been taught to think of that box on the wall, sitting in the living room, taking up space in the bedroom as a passive activity? When you sit in front of the idiot box as my dad calls it, we surrender ourselves to it, we sit down, lean back and take a hit, we let the numbness of the television enter us and we forget about the day, whats going on outside, and just stop being social. Wait stop being social that’s counter to everything else we do all day long on Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other flavor of social media fits your mood.
Consider this as you go about your week, that you spend all this time being social, but never see anyone else face to face, only to sit in front of a TV and have a one way face to face conversation with someone who doesn’t care about what you think.
On my watch list this week.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
http://www.colbertnation.com/home
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/