If We Get Enough Bandwidth - TV Won't Suck
Penn Jillette

... and if you believe that - I've got a
state of the art color laptop you can have
for under $1,200.00.

"57 Channels and Nothing On," is the title and chorus of one of last year's Springsteen songs. It hints that the Boss is more of a homebody now, than when he wrote "Wrap your legs around these velvet rims and strap your hands 'cross my engine." That was back when, baby, the town was ripping the bones from your back so you didn't sweat a lackluster season from NBC or too many similar home shopping selections. We all knew in our hearts that we weren't really born to run. We were born in the U.S.A. and tramps like us, baby, we were born to sit and watch TV. One, two, three, fo'! An early, fond, memory is complaining with my parents that there was nothing on TV. Then we got color TV and we all had to shut up and watch "Bonanza." Then color wasn't enough. We complained, got cable, and watched "The Honeymooners," in black and white. After cablevision trickled up from Hooterville, we nerds stopped watching TV. We got computers and gave our souls to a different CRT. Now computers and television are merging and everyone wants a condo on that ground floor. VR will be great for games where you want to wear a helmet but don't want to wreck your knees, but I already ranted about "Virtual Reality - It's Just Really Good TV" - [month, year]. Related to VR is interactive television. Soon we'll have serious bandwidth in both directions and a computer/TV. The possibilities are endless. We will have the power to do anything we want and we have absolutely no idea what we want to do. So, there's still a chance for you to be the Bill Gates of interactive television (the catch is that Bill Gates wants to be the Bill Gates of interactive and he's got 11 billion for developing and marketing and that's more than you have by . . . oh . . . let's round it off, shall we? - by - 11 billion.) Any ideas? (You don't get much credit for thinking of shopping and you get no credit for thinking of sex. Shopping, sex and shopping for sex propel all new technology.) How about interactive fiction; the viewer controlling the plot? With computers at each end the technology is trivial. But some choices will lead to better stories than others. Everyone wants to make the most entertaining decisions. You make less than perfect decisions in real life and how much fun is that? And who's got the talent and time to even try to write zillions of separate but equal fictional events? How many endings can you think of for "Psycho?" Many years ago I was ranting to a geologist girlfriend of a geologist friend of mine (it was a rocky relationship - ba-bing-boom! [I'm really sorry.]) about "Apocalypse Now." She said she didn't want to see one person's ego trip. What? In the arts, we don't want to see anything else! Great novels aren't written by committee. The idea in art is to glimpse an individual human soul. Understanding is our input. I don't want to add my own scenes to "Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer," or my own ending to the "Graduate." I don't want to change Picasso's colors. Technology won't solve an artistic problem. Technology wasn't holding us back, plays could have always had multiple endings but we wanted Eugene O'Neill's favorite ending. There are cool things to do with two way computer-TVs and if I think of one - I won't tell you - I'll tell Bill Gates and get a couple, two, three dollars. If I had interactive TV right now - I'd call my girlfriend in FLA, then order a pizza. Sex and shopping.