“Today’s victim of change is yesterday’s cause”

-Karl Morris

Why yes, I did quote myself. Thanks for noticing. I hope to have one such quote etched above the entrance to my tomb some day.

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Growing up in the time that I did I had certain experiences that persons, sans those with social anxiety issues, would not find terribly unique. I played sports in the yard daily, I made kites, slingshots and paper airplanes whenever the feeling took me and I could always be found among my friends whenever I wasn’t eating, sleeping or being grounded. My peers and those before me can all relate to the above and tell tales of love, loss, disobedience and revelry as only someone who has lived it could.

The “time” of which I speak is BI (Before Internet). A now nostalgic time long before instant gratification became the order of the day. I was becoming of age on the cusp of the information age. Passing through my awkward teenage years while the [mainstream] internet was in its infancy. As such I had long before developed my views and prejudices on human interactions. I had predefined mechanisms of evaluating friendships, gathering information and simply getting by in life. This, like everything else that makes us who we are, came to be because of the surrounding influences as well as the mechanisms for those interactions that existed at the time. So as the internet came along, it served only to augment [and in many ways improve] my already inbred sense of “social”.

However, while it only augmented my development, the generation that came of age at the same time as the internet has had their earthly perceptions defined by it. To them the world is a completely different place and the rules that they play by have been given a Life 2.0 upgrade.

The virtual revolution in which we all live today has been on the horizon for a very long time, certainly predating this author and many who would care to read this. My personal exposure came in the form of Video Games. This enabled me to, for the first time, take on an avatar and for a fleeting moment leave this earthly realm and live a life of fantasy. It gave me an oh so sweet taste of Virtual Life and how much I could “accomplish” without really doing much.

This escape was short lived however as there were almost always mechanisms of control in place, aka Parents. In the beginning it was pretty hard to make a case that video games were good for anything except their entertainment value and as with anything that was purely fun and nothing else, parents would limit your exposure less you take to it like a narcotic. It was something in which you could indulge when there was nothing else to do and even then you could only do it for so long before the [seemingly unreasonable] request/order came to “turn off that damn game and go outside and play”. Notwithstanding the limitations on capabilities, function and general purpose, video games served as a very useful training exercise for what was to come. However, even with its introduction into the line-of-sight of childhood distractions, the need to be amongst friends was still paramount; so whether it was football, idle sidewalk chat or a Street Fighter tournament, you could be sure that it was a [fairly large] group activity. Virtual Life only augmented what was already in place.

Compare this to the life that kids today are privy to. Advancements in technology now allow persons to interact without having to be in the same room, building or country. Indeed, they don’t even have to be on the same planet. And while all generations make use of this, members of mine and those before me use it mainly as an outlet to expand our scope and means of communicating. Those that followed have taken it to be not just the preferred method of interacting, but many times the only acceptable one.

Meet J. On the outside J looks like any normal kid. At a glance you can probably think of someone that you grew up with that fits his general profile. 12 years old, curly hair, likes video games a little more than he should and hates homework a lot more than he should. Again, J wouldn’t strike you as outside the ordinary, and indeed he isn’t. That is, of course, if you’re comparing him to his modern day peers. Try and compare J to that kid that you grew up with and it’s going to be night and day.

When J gets home from school he immediately heads for the TV and/or video game. No great surprise there. Kids love their afternoon cartoons and the only thing they love more is trying to beat the high score that they set yesterday on the game mom just dropped $50 on. This will probably go on until a parent gets home and tells him to wrap it up. If you think back, you’ll remember that once you were told as a kid to turn the television off there really was no reason to hang around the house keeping your parents company. Your interactions were fueled by your innate need to be social and the apparent lack of virtual modes of achieving this. However that is not J’s world. When J is asked to turn off the television or video game he simply retreats to the warm, ambient glow of the family’s iMac. As you observe J you start to realise that this is his true escape, everything else including video games and seemingly every activity throughout the day, were simply distractions. Something to take up the time until all the necessary components of his Virtual Life are in place. In other words, everything else is simply to burn off the time until his friends get online. Upon his entry to this land of 1′s and 0′s J is greeted by a multitude of “friends” who in some cases form fairly complex relationship metrics with each other, and in other cases are completely oblivious to the others’ existence. This depicts one of the biggest contrasts with Real Life relationships. J is able to interact with multiple circles of friends, each with varying areas of interests, purpose and goals, simultaneously. Try to envisage this feat in a conventional social setting, say a party or a local bar. It’s practically impossible if not tiring and prohibitively expensive to do so [you'll have to buy a round or drinks for each set]. J manages to accomplish this however, without even giving a thought to the fact that this was not humanly possible only a few short years ago.

One particular group of friends that J seems to interact with more than others all belong to a group that trades “merchandise” with each other to bolster their “inventory” in an effort to have a complete set of…stuff. They then go off on some mythical quest in a multi-player video game of the sort. This scenario seems to vaguely resemble the actions of trading and card games that predated this multicolor display that J has been drawn into. I couldn’t help but wonder if the experience is as fulfilling when you don’t have to go buy gum at the corner store and cross your fingers as you peel back the wrapper or hunt down the kid that has that one card that you’re missing and try to barter on amicable terms (whatever “amicable” is to a tween) and the occasional fisticuffs when a deal goes sour.

Soon after however, you start to realise that J’s actions are just as if not more fulfilling than those that I myself embarked on once upon a time. You’re reminded that he doesn’t belong to a world that has short changed his social interactions, but rather belongs to one that has redefined how those interactions are experienced. Sure, he may never get a humbling ass kicking while defending a cause, but having received a few of those myself I’m not completely sold on that being a bad thing.

One point I should make before you even ask the question: These groups of friends that J holds so close to him are made up, for the most part, of persons he has never actually met. Yes, there are a couple schoolmates as well as the neighbour’s kids, but by and large, his social group have been defined and build virtually. Schoolmates are nothing more than that, kids he will see at school. His Real World time is spent mainly playing cricket with his father and brother in the back yard and outside of that…lets just say that this isn’t the most creative kid you’ll ever meet (not necessarily a statement on his lack of ability as much as it is on the lack of inspiration and motivation). For J, the world, or the one were he prefers to “live”, is a playgroud where be can’t feel the dirt between his toes, can’t hi-five his mate and verbal utterances are preferably expressed with LOL’s and BRB’s sprinkled throughout a text based conversation. It’s a whole new paradigm, one that you can only distinguish if you belong to another. J certainly can’t. This is his world. He came and saw it waiting for him, as if it had always been. He doesn’t, and in fact does not care to know any other way of doing things. He has developed his own mechanisms and prejudices and awaits the next evolutionary step in technology that will augment what he has come to accept as the way things are. When that time comes he will lament about how the generation being born into that new age will redefine “social”.

I’ve been without a television for the better part of a month now. I can’t remember how long exactly as the first few days were a blur. It got water logged (don’t ask) and I decided not to spend money fixing it or buying a new one as there are plans afoot that would prevent me from realizing a return on my investment.

Being without television, which has been a steady companion my entire life, has been difficult to say the least. It has however forced me to seek out other methods of entertainment and expand my thus far limited horizon in terms media consumption.

Top of the list is of course Internet media. I’m a long time YouTuber (and a fan of many non-social streaming services before it) and have always been pleased with what it provides. A reactive source of moving pictures. Reactive in the sense that I have to tell it what i want, unlike a television that pushes content at me in a more proactive way. Sure I can view what others are viewing, see related media and some services will even give recommendations based on what I’ve watched in the past, all great stuff, but it’s not what I’ve gotten used to from years spent in front of the idiot box.

I’m not inclined to say that one paradigm is superior to the other, I will simply say that I’ve grown accustomed to one thing and while I can appreciate this new way of doing things,  it hasn’t managed to completely sway me into changing the way I expect to get my media.

Online media providers have failed to appease this crucial aspect of television watching habits. Sometimes people just want to get lost in what’s coming at them. Empowering me to control all aspects of what I absorb doesn’t really help me when I’m just in the frame of mind to watch whatever is on. In the same breath, people are varied in what they may choose to watch. My recommendations can’t be based solely on what I’ve watched and/or what my peers are watching. In the old way of doing things many times discoveries are stumbled upon from simple channel surfing, not complex algorithms. People need to have a choice and media companies need to not assume that new automatically equates to improved. At times it may simply be different.

P.S.

Television studios need to completely embrace the Internet as an avenue to distribute their content. I wanted to watch the Grammys tonight but there were no live streaming sources to be found. The technology is there and so are successful revenue models, so what’s the holdup?