"Television is dead." This from a manager at work. His explanation, which I've heard a few times before, was that his house doesn't even have a working TV anymore. Everyone at his house watches everything online and on their own personal phone or tablet.
Each time I hear this, I can't help but wonder if he realizes the bubble he lives in when he says that TV-is-dead as fact. Or more honestly, I wonder if he realizes how different his bubble is from my bubble - which is again different from the bubble of my former neighbors, many of who live paycheck-to-paycheck.
My bubble still exists in a world where TV comes free over the air with commercials. In the internet-limited world where I live, data caps are a fact of life and streaming is an expensive reality only. I will suggest my bubble is more transparent than my manager's.
Current estimates are that the percentage of households without a TV are in the low single digits. Percentages of households with limited access to true high speed data access is around 15% - and those who can't afford high speed access adds up to an additional 10%. The bubble for people like me is larger than the bubble for people like my manager's.
My point here isn't to proudly thump my chest and point out that I, voluntarily or involuntarily, live the life of a semi-Luddite. But it is to point out that the reality any one person sees every day doesn't match the reality of the overall population - even in first world countries. And it is both sad and dangerous when people look at their own situation and translate that broadly. When a manager at work does this, it helps me understand why many bad decisions get made.
But the bubble that I live in, or my manager lives in, or anyone else lives in isn't really the bubble I'm talking about.
I grew up smack dab in the middle of Generation X. We had one - yes 1 - TV in the house which we all shared. This reality was not abnormal, and it meant that we collectively had to decide what we were going to watch on TV. Or if we didn't want to watch what was on TV, we had to do something else. I'm not writing about this as a way to wax poetically about how much better things were. It didn't always seem that good, but there were negotiation skills to be learned in how to deal with a limited resource (the TV). There were skills to be learned in dealing with not always getting what one wanted. And it wasn't just the TV. We had a computer, a Franklin Ace 2000, earlier than many people, but it was shared as well. And as a tool primarily for education, its use was extremely limited.
There were somewhat more affluent friends who had more than one TV, but it was at most two, and often that second TV would be in the parent's bedroom; it was definitely not for kids (and friends) daily TV watching. Even in those wealthier houses, TV was often controlled by older siblings. There were arguments about what to watch and dealing with not always getting what one wanted - it was just a fact of life. Once VCR's became popular, similar issues came up with what movies to rent and watch. (of course in the 1980's, MTV was almost always ubiquitously on).
Thinking back, I was in college before I had "my own" TV and had bought a house before I had "my own" PC.
Somewhere around the early 2000's, when PC's were still normal, folders started to show up courtesy of Microsoft labeled "My Pictures" or "My Music" or "My ..." This seemed like an narcissistic step change. I don't blame Microsoft for this, it was one of the early waves in the tsunami of My, Me, I.
"TV is dead. All screen time done in my house is on our personal iPads and phones." No more learning to deal with siblings and friends. No more accepting that we won't always get our way. My Facebook feed is for me and me alone. I can scream about how I am the center of the universe on Twitter. I don't like what happens to be on the car radio at this second - no problem, I'll just tune out with my iPhone. There are life skills that will be talked about in the same way horse and buggies are talked about - historic, anachronistic, practiced only by the Atavists or odd religious sects.
We are now moving to where people are growing up in a bubble of 1.
We are now moving to where people will live in a bubble of 1.
At least until forced to interact - whether at work or driving on the road or as neighbors - dealing with others as part of society may need to be figured out much later in life. If at all. Lessons can be unlearned as the claustrophobic bubble tightens around us into adulthood. I'm not trying to overstate the importance of watching TV or streaming Netflix or Hulu. Watching TV is merely bubble gum for the eyes. But these are just one example of a individualized-everything world - where my wants take precedent over everyone else's wants (and needs).
I realize I sound like a finger-wagging grandfather here. But I believe this reality is just beginning to take shape. Maybe I am a finger-wagging old fart.
So if we have an increasingly large society built of an unlimited number of individual bubbles, there will remain another decreasing segment of society who still learn the life skills of living in larger groups - the people who choose not to, or are forced to choose not to by geography and/or income level. If all generations up through GenX grew up understanding a world of have vs. have-nots - we may be building to a future of My vs. Our; Me vs. We. It certainly seems like the latter would be better for all.
I don't see anything reversing this trend. And maybe it could be better. Already the post-millennial generation is being called iGen; that is telling. Aldous Huxley wrote, "Any change is a menace to stability." and this change seems to be happening under the untested belief that it will be better. Well, better for "Me" anyway.
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