— Ronald Reagan Video, Waiter in Café 80s
By Blue Bronc, a Trail Mix Contributor
After spending most of this year watching media on Hulu, Amazon Prime, Netflix and sites such as YouTube, I am ready to give up cable. I am even giving up MSNBC now that it is Republican lite and no longer liberal Progressive. Local television, mainly the news and weather, I can pick up over the air on an antenna.
The world of information has changed significantly during the last fifty years. Public television was in its infancy then; Julia Child was fantastic, I sat and copied her recipes as she cooked. There were three major networks and everything was simple. The news was in the news division and entertainment in the entertainment division. Newspapers were delivered morning and afternoon. Radio was AM with the FM being like a hobby for some rich people as it had no commercials.
How it has changed during the last twenty years. The internet was improving as the hardware improved. More people felt comfortable going online. Websites improved as HTML 4 was released, which was replaced sixteen years later with HTML5. Information dissemination became easy.
Even more important is the delivery. Technology has changed television beyond the “boob tube” days when black and white was the norm and color the exception. Now even the B&W movies are colorized. The television is part of the home internet system. It connects to all your devices, and is controlled by your smart phone, which is another computer. The size of the screen is now as large as one wants, from tablet size to stadium size.
That your television is another computer is important. You can communicate using it and you can receive your media from it. Keep in mind Back to the Future II, which features a Biff modeled on the lunatic in the White House. Your television can report back everything in your life to computer systems designed to give you everything you want – based on your life as seen by computer algorithms.
Am I afraid of technology? No. But for me I am cautious around technology until I can find out what it is doing. No spyware microwave oven for me. I do take care such as not bothering to plug the new television into the internet until I had studied how to keep it from reporting all the movies I watch and the YouTube videos which help me change fuel filters in the truck.
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