PDA

View Full Version : Life without TV: "Choice of information"



Ellipsis
14 Dec 2008, 01:28 AM
For the last few weeks I have been living without TV. For even longer than that last 6 months or so I have not watched more than an hour consecutively of anything other than payperview. I know many people who would like do this sorta thing but there are some challenges regarding keeping up to date with current events.

TV is good for that sorta thing the news skips details, is biased, etc. but it does give you brief summery of what is going on and how it relates to people in your region. The internet is different because you get to choose what sort of information to consume. The internet is very much like locking yourself in a library full of things extremely interesting/entertaining to yourself but otherwise being blind to the world outside.

Even when you notice a big event like the Russian attacks on Georgia or the Indian attacks you feel less motivated to click the link when you are one click away form reading about Intel's newest processor technology (maybe that is just me). My main question to you guys is are we becoming selectively ignorant? could this manifest itself further in politics?

Synaesthetic_Phyber
14 Dec 2008, 01:42 AM
I haven't been into TV for awhile, so I don't miss it. It simply doesn't exist in my reality. That does capture my relation to the Internet though: Feeling like I'd be out of the loop with things like facebook.

I'm not convinced TV is inherently bad. TV, yeah, seems to be more social. There's a cause-effect question here, but I suspect the Internet has a lot to do with my self-contained tendencies now. The world is at my fingertips, so I don't have to engage with it. It's like it's repatterned my personality.

Granted, I'm an extreme case.

pioneer_167
14 Dec 2008, 01:58 AM
Most TV programs would cause me to stab my own eyes with a sharp object if I watched them for too long.

Since I've been in college, I don't really watch hardly any TV anymore. Partly because I don't have as much time and partly because the internet has gotten so much better with things like youtube and such.

I don't worry about missing information because chances are, if it were important enough, someone will tell me about it at some point. That method of information absorption is better than being indoctrinated by all the sneaky-ish spinning of stories that goes on on TV news. Thank you Technology RSS feeds! Now I don't have to have to deal with mindless and probably incorrect political news polluting the real news of the latest in technological breakthroughs.

Ferrus
14 Dec 2008, 02:03 AM
I spent the last year before September watching nothing.

Two years before that it was the same.

I don't have any particular animus against it though - comedy and documentaries have been a great boon to my life.

V Profane
14 Dec 2008, 02:10 AM
I watch almost nothing on live broadcast TV, 'cept for football. The adverts fucking boil my piss.

But I still get my BBC news RSS feed (I love Google reader), and I expect most people still use at least one 'old media' outlet for their Internet news.