Recently I’ve been musing on the possibility that modern media, and especially television, might be turning us into a society of passive observers. (Actually, since I try not to be too much of a busybody, I’ve focused primarily on whether it is turning me into a passive observer, and whether I’m going to sit still for it [sic] if so.) It’s an issue that I’ll probably keep coming back to, since it’s difficult to find the right balance between "do what you enjoy" and "get off your donkey and do something worthwhile". (In the meantime, there’s a fascinating post at Irredenta that implies that some of our guesses about "healthy" and "unhealthy" may be wrong.)
However, my lady pointed out that our TV watching habits have changed since we became TiVo devotees. Many folks have praised TiVo for its ability to skip commercials, thus allowing you to compress a one hour show into 45 minutes. For some shows, this is what we do — as long as the commercials are all old repeats. (We usually back up and watch the interesting new commercials, since the best of them are actually quality film-making in their own right. Besides, free broadcasts aren’t free, and as long as they keep up their end of the deal by making the commercials watchable, I’ll keep up my end.) Other one hour shows may take 20 minutes: with closed-captioning turned on, you can zip through a news program at triple speed and still follow what’s going on, slowing down only for vital stories or film clips for which you need more subtle details. (We don’t do this much, but it’s nice to know we can.)
Those applications are all very well. On the other hand, when we watch our favorite shows, we tend to find that a one hour program runs to more like 90 minutes, as TiVo helps us become fully engaged. Part of this is simply taking advantage of the 8 second instant replay to finally catch all of the clever dialog. (I have no idea how anyone could watch "West Wing" without a TiVo.) A larger part is in feeling free to pause and discuss developments. Thus you hear quotes like:
- "I can’t believe they’re going to rely on hydraulics. That trick never works."
- "I thought I’d seen Lurch in other roles. Did you know that he had three Star Trek roles as well as playing "Thing"?"
- "Time out. Want to place a bet on whether the shooter is a regular character?"
- "So that’s where the polar bear came from. Now what other mysteries can we clear up?"
- "Hold on. This is just too good a show to watch without popcorn." (Okay, so the pauses aren’t always relevant.)
To make this easier, we keep two remote controls on hand, so that either of us can stop the action. (This sometimes leads to the "two pauses don’t make a stop" problem, but on the whole it’s worthwhile.) We find that we really do get more out of our favorite shows this way: we can comment freely during the shows because we know we can always back up easily to catch missed dialog; we feel that we’re actually participating in a shared activity rather than just sitting in the same room at the same time; and most importantly, we just have more fun.
All of this, of course, brings up the question of what we might be able to do with true interactive media. Certainly I’d love to see headline news with hyperlinks to take me to the full story. I’d be thrilled to see the obligatory mid-show recaps and rule summaries in "competition" programming become optional. ("Yes, I know that it’s 5 points for a bulls-eye and 2 points for anywhere else on the target — you’ve told me 4 times already.") How about a fully annotated soap-opera for those who can’t keep track of all 73 subplots? Would you like a version of "Jeopardy" that holds off on the answer while you are pondering? While they would require some technical changes, none of these should require a substantial increase in production costs, and I believe that they could all be feasible. Once the technology catches on, then we could hopefully start pushing the boundaries of interactivity and turn TV night into a full-fledged activity rather than a slouch.
