

When the Screen Goes Blank: The Good We Might do if We Turned Off Our Sets - fleaflicker
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/books/review/Manjoo-t.html

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cmurphycode
Most of the recent criticisms of TV that I've seen don't spend much time
recognizing that the human brain needs downtime. As a way to veg out after 12
hours of programming, TV isn't any worse than reading a trashy novel or
whatnot. I think the real question is, is there something about bad TV that
changes our brain?

That is, is it not just a break from work? Are we actively making our brains
more demanding of a break? In my limited experience, TV does seem to "rot" my
brain. The more I watch, the fewer hours I can spend each day doing productive
tasks.

Thus, my goal is to find an activity that allows me to veg out as effectively
as TV while improving, or at least not inhibiting, my mental acuity. One
obvious example is exercise. Of course, as any regular weightlifter or long
distance runner can tell you, exercise can be rather addicting itself!

~~~
sprout
I've found Hulu to be an increasingly effective TV-replacement. TV gives a
temptation to just sit and watch whatever comes up with no end in sight. It's
a lot like going to one of the higher-traffic Reddits. It's a ton of least-
common-denominator crap that offends no one significantly and interests
everyone marginally. On Hulu, I zero in on what I want to watch, I watch it,
then I do something else.

~~~
Groxx
Same here. The ability to resume at any later time also makes it an attractive
substitute.

Now they just need to get more shows :\

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Groxx
Time not watching TV != time doing something productive, much less
_efficiently_. Ever heard of burn-out?

But I'm sure we all knew this. Anyone read the book, and can comment on its
contents?

All that said, I have no TV, except for one I occasionally hook up for movies
with friends (my computer screens / speakers are unwieldy). I don't miss it,
and I've read a _ton_ more without it (including frightening amounts of time
here.). I'm certainly more productive without it.

~~~
gwern
> Time not watching TV != time doing something productive, much less
> efficiently. Ever heard of burn-out?

There is useful work which requires very little mental energy or effort -
effectively zero.

Since the article mentions it, let's take Wikipedia. Perhaps copyediting is
too difficult. Never mind, you can just fix a few dozen or hundred
disambiguations.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Disambigu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Disambiguation#Goals))
Currently too difficult for computers to do reliably, but very easy for a
human, and useful (if not as useful as referencing {{fact}}s, say).

~~~
Groxx
Menial things may not _require_ mental energy or effort, but they certainly do
_cost_.

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minouye
So the May 1st edition of the Economist this year had a fantastic special
report on the future of television. Although I agree it can be a huge time
waste, I think live TV will continue to play an important role in media
consumption going forward. A lot of the TV I continue to watch and enjoy is
typically best when seen live--World Cup, college football, etc. Although
there is a large bias towards sporting events, I think this phenomenon exists
even with series (e.g. even with the rise in ownership of DVR's, many people
still watch their favorite shows live).

[http://www.economist.com/specialreports/specialreportslist.c...](http://www.economist.com/specialreports/specialreportslist.cfm?category=455022)

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zabuni
The main problem with tv is not the fact that a person watches video, although
I think the video medium is one that tends to manipulative because it combines
a lot of emotional elements. The problem is the linearity of television. You
turn it on, something is on the television, and you watch it if you want, or
turn to another channel.

You hear it in the language, you watch tv, not watch Law and Order, or watch
Friends (with some exceptions for really popular shows like Lost) Where
Hulu/Netflix/DVR/Dvds come in is that they direct the watching experience. You
choose to watch something, making it much less of a block of time everyday.

Part of what Shirky's book, Cognitive Surplus, which was mentioned in the
article, is that the cost of organizing people has gotten much less since the
invention of the Internet. People now do things besides television watching,
like Etsy, or discuss politics, or having communities of artists, because
doing those things is more rewarding that television, and about as easy to set
up as watching television. Note all of the startup advice hear on Hacker News.

I agree with the author a little in the end, that the activities won't always
be positive. The same abilities that allow us to coordinate disaster relief
funding from the home also all pro-anorexia support groups to flourish. I also
think the reviewer missed one of the better points in the book, that the
difficult part will be getting people to do something more valuable than
television. It's great to create, but most people will create lolcatz
pictures, which isn't that much better than television.

Overall, pretty good book at describing the Internet phenom of online groups
being able to do a whole lot given the right circumstances. I imagine if Paul
Graham was ever in any type of trouble, the denizens of Hacker News would
probably turn out in a similar fashion to some of the examples given in the
book.

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_delirium
It's an interesting criticism, because while I don't much like TV these days,
I feel that, in a lot of ways, for me the internet is a lot more dangerous
than TV ever was. At least traditionally, there were only so many TV stations,
and you could only watch them so long before getting bored. The internet will
waste essentially _infinite_ amounts of your time, though. Granted, I do
things he sees as useful, like edit Wikipedia (I have like 30k edits). But I'm
not sure if the shift in medium necessarily implies any sort of improvement in
utilization of cognitive resources. We've still got YouTube, Facebook, Reddit,
and all manner of time-wasting going on here.

~~~
alextp
Maybe, but I think internet time wasting is a lot less toxic than TV time
wasting. For me the main differences are:

tv channel-surfing is a variable-rewards skinner box (more so than internet)

tv has an essentially higher cost to stop watching (getting up from your couch
is a lot harder than alt+tabbing back to emacs), and due to the immersive
quality of video it is also harder to multi-task with useful stuff, like
alternating between reading HN and an academic paper

due to the rigidity of tv programming, it has an incentive for you to just
stay where you are (if a show you like starts in 10 minutes you're unlikely to
do anything useful in these 10min) and for you to structure your life around
it (staying up late to watch a late show, for example, means you're probably
going to look for thing to watch on tv before that late show you wanted to
watch)

tv creates a social illusion (at least here in brazil almost everybody knows
tv-related inside jokes and comments, and not watching tv means being left out
of these conversations)

tv programming comes in very long and rigid quanta of time (just like WoW
playing; half an hour easily goes by without anything significant happening),
unlike reading stuff on the internet or watching 5min-long youtube videos

tv tends to be (although this can be said to be changing) more about the tv
experience (sit on couch, relax, watch "interesting", beautiful people doing
"interesting" things in a funny way) and less about the specific content,
while the internet is a lot more about the content, so there's a higher chance
you can get something out of it

tv is completely passive, no comments allowed.

~~~
carussell
_tv has an essentially higher cost to stop watching (getting up from your
couch is a lot harder than alt+tabbing back to emacs)_

On the other hand, it's physically more difficult to come back to the TV once
you've gone away.

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loupgarou21
My wife and I stopped watching television almost a year ago. We do watch one
or two movies a week still, but not regular TV.

When we first tell people we don't watch TV anymore the general reaction is
"That's great, I wish I could do that."

It does periodically get a little awkward sometimes. The biggest time it gets
awkward is when our friends that know we don't watch TV ask us things like
"hey, did you see the trailer for that new movie?" or "Hey, did you see this
story on the news last night?" No, we don't watch TV, we don't see very many
movie trailers, just what is on the DVD before the movie we rented, and those
are usually for older movies. We don't watch the local news (we do read local
news though.)

~~~
Groxx
I keep somewhat up to date with news via this site, and some from NPR. Between
the two, everything major and most I'm likely to care about is covered, and I
feel no great loss at not knowing that there was a 12 car pileup in Kansas,
nor do I lament wading through the websites / 45 minute piece covering it to
get to anything remotely important.

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Adam503
My cable box went back to Comcast 2 months ago. Don't miss it at all.

