Paying for Liveness

One big stumbling block for television surrogates like the various incarnations of webTV, Apple TV, netflix, and hulu was the failure to create the relatively passive, lean-back, couch potato experience of sitting on a sofa and watching something on a big screen. Viewing something on your laptop makes it difficult to give one's self over to a semi-passive viewing experience. The opportunities for distraction go beyond other content that one may channel-surf through. They are different experiences, extremely personal and almost endless in variety: posting a comment on Facebook, reading a blog, checking your email. It offers pleasure, but not the same pleasure as what we refer to as "television."

Finally, some of those TV surrogates are moving beyond that stumbling block on to our TVs. The evolution of netflix and now hulu towards easy-to-install view-on-your-TV versions reveal something about value and the definition of television. All three platforms offer much of the same content, yet all three are based on different pay structures (cable = lots of ads, higher fees; hulu = some ads, lower fees; netflix = no ads, lower fees). While it should be noted that the content libraries are not exactly the same (netflix and hulu offer deeper, broader catalogs but do not have sports or news), it may seem as though they offer the same product, more or less. Why would anyone pay more for more ads and a smaller catalog of titles?

Basically, the consumer pays for live-ness, either with ads or money. This applies especially to sports and news which lose value immediately after they're aired, and we might consider any kind of soft news (gossip) part of this. But even with shows that do not need to be viewed live in order to be enjoyed, there is some added value in being able to view them as they air. Wanting to watch a program as it is aired isn't just a matter of impatience. Being able to discuss the show with others matters, and its easier to do this if everyone is viewing the show simultaneously.

Conversations about shows taken from a vast catalog (either netflix or hulu now) have a different tenor than those about television. They're often simply attempts to convert people who haven't seen the program or attempts to describe what happens in the show to the uninitiated. The catalog is just too vast for a lot of overlap in people's viewing experience. TV's appeal lies in its limiting of the available choices as well as its temporality. Its also something that doesn't really require our careful consideration. Like a more personal version of a newspaper, it should just blurt out what's happening so that viewers can talk about it. More reality TV, more sports, more direct address.

Panic/Panek & Social Media Use

As I write, there is a tornado warning in my area. I have taken the appropriate precautions: I'm in my basement away from the West and South walls. And I brought my laptop. Aside from being the most valuable of all my possessions, my laptop (assuming its connected to the internet, which it is) is quite a valuable thing in this situation.

First, I should say that I have very little personal experience w/ tornadoes. My closest brush was when I visited a friend in Iowa and woke up to an ungodly, sustained siren. Half-conscious, I thought the world might be ending. My knowledge of tornadoes - the odds of them occurring, the damage wrought - was informed by weather channel specials and mediocre Bill Paxton movies. It turned out they were just testing the siren and there was no tornado at all.

So, I had no personal experience w/ this danger, and the second-hand knowledge I had was from unreliable sources. There's this air of paranoia that comes w/ over-preparedness that gets drummed into our heads by authority figures legitimately concerned for our safety. I would assume that this leads us to believe that the odds of encountering a life-threatening earthquake or tornado or hurricane are far higher than it actually is. Am I a fool to be in the basement?

Anyway, back to my laptop. I first knew about the warning via an almost comically old-fashioned medium - the siren. I then went online and tried to go to the weather channel website which wasn't loading, so i turned on the TV and indeed there was a tornado warning. I googled "tornado safety" to confirm my hunch that being in the basement was a good idea. I felt like an idiot for doing this, partly b/c it suggested that I was dependent on technology and possessed no horse sense of my own. Its only a matter of time before I start asking google whether or not I'm in love or where I should move.

Then I went to Twitter, which, aside from being a terrific way of knowing what David Allen Grier had for lunch, really is a great resource for immediate local news and/or reaction to an event. The only other time twitter was of use to me was when my phone wouldn't send/receive texts. I wanted to know whether it was just me or whether the network was down and Twitter told me what was up. Similarly, now, I want to know if I'm a fool for being in my basement. Twitter tells me that, at the very least, I am a fool in good company.

Its funny to imagine people like me, in a basement, who feel the need and have the ability to broadcast something to the outside world about their unusual condition. For every remarkable tweet or blog post or YouTube video of an earthquake, a tornado, or an insurgence, there must be a growing number of false alarms, dispatches from intact basements.

There is something absurd about someone in a time of genuine peril using social media, kind of a "I know I'm about to die a horrible death, but just let me tweet about it first" thing. This is not as absurd as it might initially seem. This is a natural instinct - to reach out, to try to connect w/ as many people as possible. 9/11 happened before the rise of web 2.0, mobile access to social networking sites, etc. People on the planes called the people they loved and left poignant messages. If they had the means, why wouldn't they also want to connect w/ other people they loved?

In reality, these dispatches provide valuable information to others and serve a primal instinct to connect when one's demise (however unlikely) might be near. I think of them as moments in which our survival instincts overcome social mores (the "boy, is this lame" view of the actions) and do something that we "should" be doing.

Now, with the oldest medium of all - my own two ears - I have detected that the storm has passed. That's how they did it in the old days, I suppose, before Twitter, before the emergency broadcast system, before the sirens. Weather.com still says there's a tornado warning. How long do I stay in the basement? Do I believe my ears or do I believe the website?