Tag: Authors@Google

Television for me

Posted by Vilius – December 19, 2007

Back in 2003, just before starting engaging in my PhD studies at DTU, I drafted on my website how my life would look like after 2006:

“Finish PhD, leave Denmark for Lithuania, start living settled life, get married, have kids, watch TV.. you know, stuff to do.. :) ”

It was a wild guess, kind of a dream. Something, what would really be nice to have. Friends till 2006 laughed and seemed puzzled how come I can do a 5 year planning? I do not know how, I just did it. Surprisingly, it works quite amazingly precise!

Now, after finishing PhD, returning to Lithuania, starting living settled life and working on romantic relationship, I see one aspect of the vision I do not like any more. It is TV. Or at least television and a TV set I was imagining back in 2003.

Right now I am against television. I do not wish to have one at home. When I visit someone, I turn off TV set as soon as I am allowed to.

The reasons simply are:

  • When TV set is on, people stare at it. It is a big big sucker of attention.
  • The value of the television content is low. Movies on fixed broadcast times interrupted with ads, news covering many horrible and negative issues, bringing bad emotions.

So, what I do about it?

I promote TV, where one chooses the content, selects positive, inspirational shows, new ideas. This means, that I watch myself and suggest to others:

Why ever I would need to switch on a TV set when I have this great content, being constantly published at the rate higher than I can consume? Do not forget about podcasts, learnoutloud.com, BBC, audited texts, and audio books for traffic jams situations, airport waits, and long travels.

For sure, movies on a hardrive and in cinemas will be here forever too, for one’s need to get into disconnection mode.

If you exploring, get inspired by services and projects which I do not use as: Joost, GigaOm’s newteevee. They are changing and fighting TV habbits of last decades quite successfully.

And I believe it is only for good, viewer has to be in total control what he watches.

Hopefully, by the time I have kids and want them to learn from TV programs (the value I discovered from Malcolm Gladwell’s books) , I will be able to get a good service via online channels too – which would allow me to forget TV set completely.