MEDIA MIX: Living On Demand
Convenience, Curiosity and Cluelessness in Tech Land
2008-07-08
By Eric Easter

In the early confounding and exciting days of the internet, I sat on a panel on technology at the Congressional Black Caucus where I predicted that someday in the near future, an unintended result of this proliferation of information and technology would be that rather than people knowing more, people might in fact know even less. That ultimately the power of absolute choice would lead to the equivalent of a world of college students who excel only at their majors and flunk the basics. That given the opportunity to seek only the information that one is interested in, most people would not seek other interests but only become more informed about a limited set of interests.  The web would not make Jazz aficionados, for example, become polka fans, but they would use the tools to find even more jazz.  Racists would not suddenly become enlightened, but simply become better and more informed racists.

I didn’t say it as something that was dangerous or wrong, only as something that should be considered. Fifteen years after that statement, I’ve become one of those people who is choosing only what I want to choose, and I admit it scares me a bit.

I’m not certain at what point my life became almost totally on demand, but I never actually took notice of the fact until watching the recent BET Awards and realizing with a slight bit of horror that I did not recognize many of the celebrities on the red carpet, in the audience and several of those on stage. Ordinarily I’d attribute that to age – a sign that I’d become so satisfied with my taste in jazz, world music and indie rock that I’d closed the door permanently to most hip hop & R&B.  But thing is, I knew the names of the artists and had heard much of their music, I simply could no longer place the names with the faces. Whatever form of media these people’s faces have been on, I’m clearly not demanding it.

And it’s not just BET. I can barely get through an episode of Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood without at some point feeling lost.  I haven’t seen an episode of The Real World since Las Vegas, I haven’t watched the nightly news since Peter Jennings’ death, nor could I have an intelligent conversation about any network program since 2001.  I am now completely cabled.  I watch MSNBC and CNN for news, Fox News for comedy, HBO, Bravo, HGTV, TCM, AMC, PBS, VH1 Soul, Showtime and Comedy Central for entertainment.
 
Started with a simple moment, when a live-in girlfriend got custody of the TV in a breakup. For a full year I lived on a diet of NPR and the early version of the web which was more of a curiosity and had not yet gained enough significant content to be a utility beyond e-mail. The real revelation came not with my media choices, but the soul changing nature of no longer having other people’s thoughts and creativity fed to me and listening to my own.

A few years later I became a first adopter to XM Satellite radio. That was pre-iPod, but I never looked back. It satisfied by eclectic (some would say schizophrenic) taste in music and the lack of commercials was, and still is, a major draw.  But since I rarely listened to radio at home, my XM boombox was merely a fancy option for entertaining. And with the very notable exception of Washington DC’s WPFW (in my opinion, the most vital community station in the country) I haven’t listened to terrestrial radio willingly in six years.

Musically, the on-demand life has been a blessing. With XM, iPod and now WiFi radio being my sole sources, I can enjoy music the way I did before videos, creating my own visual concepts instead of Hype Williams, making my own determinations about a song’s meaning whether the artist intended that meaning or not. With no pre-conceived visual notions, live concerts now offer the excitement of discovery along with the musical experience. And importantly, it has driven me to buy dramatically more music.

For all the talk about the web’s dominance, it was actually TIVO that ushered in my total immersion into on-demand living. The recording of new programming is the least compelling of its features. What TIVO does, by facilitating long term planning, is completely eliminate the concept of appointment TV, a notion that is freeing in ways that are hard to describe. I’ve had friends reject the notion of TIVO because the last thing they need to do is watch more TV, but the net result is actually considerably less TV watching. The ability to watch whenever you want also makes you realize that often that time never comes.

It was also a perfect solution for my family. My children literally have no notion of a television schedule or the existence of many channels. They only know the programs they are allowed to watch and assume they are on constantly. As a result, choosing not to read or play because a show is on is a concept that is completely unknown to them. This too is a blessing.

Cell phones, however, have been a non-starter with me. The freedom I’ve gained from the on-demand life has had the residual effect of making me impatient with interruption. I certainly want the ability to reach out on demand, but I have little interest in being reached.

And I may be an exception, but despite all the fear from newspaper and magazine publishers, technology has actually led me back to print, not away from it. No appointment with the Sopranos means I can make an appointment with a good book.

There is a drawback, of course. It bothers me greatly to read a newspaper article and miss the context because I haven’t watched The Hills, or stumble on some new music that isn’t new at all, but was missed because I was deep into my own collection. That may seem of little importance, but as an editor trying to reach a broad audience, I can’t sleep on pop culture or breaking news.  I didn’t know Jesse Helms was dead until yesterday. There are financial consequences also. A life devoid of commercials also means I can miss a marketer’s shift in focus, something that could lose the company money in an advertiser meeting. But that impact is leveled by the fact that there’s very little that I’m not interested in. And I am at least aware of what I don’t know and driven to find out.

Unfortunately, not everyone has a reason or the desire to stay broadly informed. Indeed, I’ve found it frightening the number of people I meet -young people in particular - who in a world of unlimited information sources, seem to know increasingly less. They are brilliant at the things they do professionally, but seem ignorant of all else, and worse, completely satisfied with their lack of knowledge. This is cause for alarm.

There was, of course, a time not so long without much media choice. And while the old system clearly lacked access and diversity, one benefit of having only three TV channels was a common set of cultural connectors, imagery and expectations. There is something to be said about saying the words “Cosby” or “Leave it to Beaver” and everyone in the room getting the same image of family and fatherhood. Indeed it would be difficult to get through a great deal of today’s American literature or even the vaunted New York Times without a keen knowledge of the TV and music-based references that populate much of the texts.

But should we go back to that time? Never.

The rapidly multiplying supply of information will not necessarily result in increased demand, but it does open up the possibilities, which is equally important. Who knows what genius may be sparked from some arcane piece of data? But you have to want to find it. We will have to start teaching American children about information the way we teach them about food -- try it all first, then decide whether you like it. In the end it is intellectual curiosity that will trump any negative impact of a life completely on demand.

Eric Easter is Chief of Digital Strategy for Johnson Publishing. He writes about politics, culture and technology for Ebonyjet.com