[ExI] television 2.0, was: why darwin matters

[spike]

> 2009/5/17 Harvey Newstrom <mail at harveynewstrom.com>:
> > On Friday 15 May 2009 4:35:26 pm spike wrote:

> >> ...You Tube is the perhaps best argument 
> for caloric restriction. spike
> >
> > You mean because we don't want to look like those fat slobs 
> we see on YouTube?

Rather because I want to live to see what is the 2050s version of the most
wicked cool thing of that decade, just as YouTube might be considered this
decade's wickedest.

> >
> > Seriously, YouTube is fun...

Not only fun, but it points the way for television 2.0.  Modern television
programming, like YouTube, is cluttery and junky, thin gruel indeed, and is
being funded by selling ad space.  YouTube doesn't have ads, and it is
searchable.  This points to why it is that I view broadcast television so
seldom I scarcely know how to turn the thing on.  We have an enormous high
definition television that is used for nothing more than playing toy train
videos for the larva.

What we need for television 2.0 is a feature where you can ask it to show
you something specific according to your mood, then it goes off and finds it
somewhere.  We have all these channels, adding more and more of them until
we effectively have none.  Remember in the 80s when we (guys especially)
used to sit the clicker (which doesn't actually click) and drive our wives
nuts by stepping thru all the channels?  How many of us do that now?
Anyone?  There are a couple hundred channels, too many to watch them all
simultaneously as we did when we had a dozen.  Most of them are on
commercials, so effectively we have no channels, since we don't bother
trying to find a specific program at a specific time.  I want something like
a google feature where I can just say "motorcycle race" or "original star
trek" or "ants" and it goes off and finds something for me that matches the
general description, as Google finds YouTube videos for us.  I also want a
scroll bar in case I get in a hurry and want to cut to the chase, and I will
pay for it by the hour viewed, like the power meter on my house.  But I
flatly refuse to sit thru commercials, for time is money.  TV 2.0 should be
more like YouTube.

> > ...
> I'm with Spike, youtube is amazing. Not because of the 
> endless sea of crap, but because of the pearls that lie within...Emlyn

Our clade (that would be all of you) helps us find those rare pearls in that
vast sea.

spike