...according to a 1989 Compute! Magazine article: scan the custom newspaper that spills from your fax; capture segments of a show you like and put them in a video report for school for $1,000; ISDN will simultaneously transmit voice, video, and computer data. You'll talk to your TV set, and it'll customize itself...This article itself is pretty accurate, though the extent to which computers have invaded the household and everyday work is less than what they predict. Students don't write with electronic pens and, when we come home we don't "... slip on special eyeglasses and stroll through a completely artificial world." But I do slip in a DVD and stroll through the world of Myst IV, so pretty close.
What I always choke on is the "customization" thing. Something about the idea that my computer or TV only shows me the content I choose seems so...narrow-minded to me. Part of the reason I still enjoy receiving the paper NY Times every weekend is that I often stumble upon, and read, articles I would normally have skipped if I were reading them online. And I feel that reading them enriches me, makes me a more interesting and well-rounded person, at least in current events. Which is important to me. There's something of the George Bush, living-in-a-dangerous-bubble quality to "customizing" your news to only read about the stuff you're interested in. Of course we all do this to a certain extent - you won't find me regularly reading Foxnews.com, our DVR captures only those shows we want to watch, and my wife no doubt skips right over a lot of articles I would read immediately. So already the customization meme has invaded our househould, and we miss information that we might now have were we watching it on the more serial, synchronous news sources of yore - network news, newspapers, radio, etc. We're probably all the more liberal for not exposing ourselves to more conservative "thought", but I can't say it troubles us on a daily basis. Well, obviously it troubles me a little bit or I wouldn't be writing about this!
Thing is, we do fight the filtering, in at least two ways: NPR is almost always on in the house, and we get and read the weekend NYT religiously (except for today when the bastards totally skipped the initial delivery and the replacement copy - grrr). But I realize that even with those the content might be perceived as liberally-biased to begin with, and of course I turn off NPR anytime I hear a Bush sound bite. (I can't listen to the man without white-knuckling the steering wheel and fuming about the twin tragedies of his elections. How we could twice "choose" a "leader" who is so stupid is really just stupefying to me.) So I'm still filtering and customizing.
I guess what I'm trying to say, as artlessly as possible, is that the increasing ability of the public to tune out thinkers and lines of thought that they disagree with may be contributing, in no small part, to the current divisions of ideology we're seeing today, at least in political discourse. If those who disagree with gay marriage were to listen to more NPR, read more NY Times, or read books with gay characters, there might be a percentage of them who would have an open mind toward it. (Thank goodness Maryland does.) Conversely, perhaps if I listened to more religious people about their beliefs I might be more willing to concede that there may be a god, if not a God. Unlikely, but who knows? In any event, I don't believe that I always know exactly what I want to read about or watch - I like the variety and the surprise of exploring new topics. I hope people aren't losing their willingness to learn about topics they aren't familiar with already.
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