Very chilling, indeed! I remember feeling the same way when they started putting televisions with store-specific programming up in Wal-Mart (I was living in the South at the time and Wally World was all we had). I think my exact thoughts were "Haven't you already trapped us enough already?!"

There's a main drag in Vancouver, WA that has traffic surveilence cameras not just at every traffic light, but every single street lamp. I have no idea why the coverage is so... redundant. I mean, it seems that cameras placed that closely together would pretty much give you a seamless shot of every single inch of that road way. Why?

I like William Gibson's work and some of it has an appeal in the "cool gadgets" sort of way... Of course the whole dystopia (sp) thing, big corporation control, and inequity parts struck me as a bad idea.

You can't escape it, and if you wanna see how *stupid* and *addicted* people have come to be on technology, come work with me for a day. I've had grown men almost crying on my phone... because email is down. I've had people lose their minds, like drug addicts being told there's no more heroine, when I tell them there's an outage of the internet, or TV, or both. People around here bitch like mad if they're in a place w/no TV.

It's scary and when people on the phone ask me if I like computers and technology I have to bite my tongue cause I'm likely to go off.

Do I like TV? yes. Do I like the Internet? Yes - without it I'd never have met Jody or all the people here...

Do I sometimes want to run for the hills? Yes

I tell people I don't have a TV and they just look at me like I'm some crazy woman who probably has a cabin in the woods and her own manifesto on the evils of technology. And then I have to reassure them that I still have the internet and I still have video games, and I'm not saying I'm better, just that I don't have time for that many screens starring back at me.

I think Gibson had some neat ideas, but he was quick to point out the potential drawbacks of any significant advance of technology. What's the quote? "Whenever science makes a discover, the devil grabs it while the angels are the debating the best way to use it?"

It seems strange to me, still, that in my neighborhood, which has problems with crime and gangs and the buses arriving at all (let alone on time) that someone down in City Hall took the time and energy to push through funding to make sure we had our TVs. It has an almost "let them eat cake" vibe to it. Spend that money on fixing up the buses, or keeping the fares low. That would be more helpful than flatscreens.

I tell people I don't have a TV and they just look at me like I'm some crazy woman who probably has a cabin in the woods and her own manifesto on the evils of technology. And then I have to reassure them that I still have the internet and I still have video games, and I'm not saying I'm better, just that I don't have time for that many screens starring back at me.

I hear ya. I tell people who are ranting about Lost or Desperate Housewives or whatever that I do not watch TV. If they look at me strangely, I tell them that my TV gets exactly TWO channels, and one of them is in French, and to get any kind of picture quality (as I wanted for the Winter Olympics, because I am an Olympics nut) the bunny ears are festooned with enough foil for a cross between a monochromtic Christmas tree and a kinetic sculpture of an octopus and it still doesn't work. The nice TV is for the DVD player, so I can wait until some dear friend of mine burns me a DVD of whatever show season I may want.

This weekend, though, staying in a hotel, I watched TV for hours: my annual overcompensation. And discovered I don't like Seinfeld that much.

I have read about people feeling like they had ADD until they covered the moving headline strip on CNN, and I agree. I hate that strip, trying to give you hockey scores while the main part talks about terrorism and a little bit in the corner gives stock indices. Hate it hate it hate it.

"TV will never replace the newspaper. You can't swat a fly with a rolled-up television."

Or line rabbit cages with it, either. Or cover the windows. And - bliss! - you can flip through the paper, and read the articles that catch your eye. Again and again. Without any network telling you what and in what order you should learn about the world.

This Max Headroom-esque idea that we should live in a society where it is impossible to escape a television screen — when did that become the rule of the day?

Wel, I think the answer is: back in the '80's when ATM's first came into use and (surprise) you got your picture taken every time you used it. They didn't tell you about it (they didn't have to). --oly