i think the the tv gadget is great………but don`t be surprised if someone objects if you are heavy-handed with it.

i don`t like tv but there are those who are comforted by it`s constant noise and light.

same with radio.

i am living with a couple presently who put the cbc radio news on in the morning and then proceed to read the newspaper.

i take possession of my apartment tomorrow so i will be able to not have my tv on or have the radio on for any reason.

the only reason i have tv is for my kids to play xbox and so i can watch soccer and the occasional movie.

Jesus effin Christ! If business is everything, it bears noting that business is now nothing as well. Again, bear that in mind. You business apologists are doing no favors for anybody. I fear this has not dawned on many yet. Paradoxically, this is because well duh, business IS EVERYTHING.

Except it’s not. (ad infinitum)

Read your copy of Pale Blue Dot again rangers. There’s a vast universe out there and nobody had any right to corral anyone into anything. Weep weep, sob sob.

Oh wait.

I know waaay off topic and completely irrational there. That’s the way I roll.

Don’t like the CNN screens at the airport? Take control of your private space and watch/listen to your ipod.

What? Are you serious? Don’t like corporate branding? Replace it with more corporate branding that better suits your self-image and interests!

Does the TV screen at the checkout line bother you? Pick up a magazine and read about the latest celebrity scandal.

Again, “celebrity scandal” is not a viable alternative to a world in which I am *not* constantly bombarded by televisions, magazines and checkout counters.

individuals are now accustomed to being able to custom-tailor every element of their experience, and as a result, we’ve become much more media savvy and demanding.

I demand to be able to custom-tailor an experience where we don’t have to be media savvy, where we can just live without having to “custom-tailor” all our experiences.

…makes no sense from an ethical point of view, and certainly not a logical perspective.

Interesting that you say these are two different things.

…the unethical conduct of another NEVER justifies unethical conduct by you.

An ethicist walks into a bar… finds his friends dead in their chairs. The killer sits across the room from them yelling gibberish at their lifeless faces. Does he tear the killer’s throat out? Nope. NEVER justified. Does he attempt to take control of the situation? Nope. What gives him the right? Instead he must either submit quietly or plead meekly.

Ethics or attempted justification for cowardice?

If someone talks too much, do you have a right to bind and gag them?

If I did have the right, would that make it OK?

Where do I get these rights? Are rights always granted and never claimed? Who has the right to bestow or revoke my rights? You?

If someone has the right to talk too much all I need is to be quick with the duct tape.

Jack M’arsehole? Hold still.

‘Can they not make one that leaves out all the advertisements?’

His point being, that the technology is possible but the technology is trumped by commercial interests…

(and who are ‘they’, anyway?)

Frankly, what you have written here is a case in point of everything that is wrong with everything. You take what you perceive to be circa 2006 normalcy and have conflated it with what it is to be alive. Do you not remember your upbringing? Do you not fathom who you really are outside and beyond this “matrix” of cult-like unquestioning that a TV must be on at all times? Do you or have you ever considered the psychological ramifications of having your best friends be the characters who appear on a TV set?

When I was growing up, when we ate at the dinner table, the TV was off (unless the Broncos were playing ;)). Now that there are hardly any family dinner tables, save outside of Christian fundamentalist homes etc, there is hardly any reason to bitch. Dinner is outsourced, entertainment is outsourced, love and family are now outsourced too. It’s all about fulfilling a need and the free market has that covered right? Well, I’ll tell ya what, it doesn’t have the simple physics of these devices covered up at all — hence the tv-b-gone. It’s the same way Iraqi’s heads don’t have the physics wrapped up about protecting what they use to think, process, imagine and love from an American bullet. Ethics! Ha! You care nothing for human life and you believe all falls under the rubric of business what what is necessary for it to maintain it’s prerogatives over the malleability of brilliant human nature.

The nature of humanity is this Jack:

Humans created the television

Humans also created the TV-B-Gone

Now you tell me where your “allegiances” lie eh?

You could seriously write a “sci-fi” story about the present state of the TVs and the devices that shut them off. A story about how turning off the TVs everywhere becomes more entertaining and more popular than anything the TVs emit. Now wouldn’t that be something you’d like to bind and gag somebody for Jack? Supply and demand. Supplant and undermine. There are no ethics with that box you defend, it’s helter-skelter and it’s worse than even the twisted mind of Charles Manson could conceive. Hell, that’s why he makes a comeback now and again on that boob tube. A good Manson inspired dose is always good for the ratings isn’t it?

But then again, if Tvs were off, we’d have to endure your philosophy on why TV is so great. Eeesh, we’re fucked. Period.

Full disclosure: I watch TV and I have never, nor would I ever use this silly TV-BGone when peeps are watching something they are engaged in. Problem is Jack, that most often TVs are on FOR NO GODDAMN REASON! Nobody watching, nobody caring. Uh-oh! How do we engage those viewers? AH! By instituting flashes and extreme changes in light to get people to look up. Well I get sick of that shit. I hate how my eyes wander into the utter void of that goddamn programming and proof that we’re being purposely driven insane.

Again’ there’s nothing wrong with the device known as the TV, but there is something wrong with the device known as a remote control which can turn any TV off. Devices devices! Who’s to know what’s right?

makes no sense from an ethical point of view, and certainly not a logical perspective.

I’m not arguing from either of those perspectives. In fact, I’m not actually “arguing” anything at all.

You’ve written a long, rambling piece that doesn’t make a single coherent ethical argument

I’m not - again - making ethical arguments. I’m exploring a theme.

If someone talks too much, do you have a right to bind and gag them?

If they are on my website, I do!

You don’t like TV? Fine: go to establishmenst that don’t have one. I don’t have any trouble finding such places. Do you only frequent bars and airports? You want the channel changed? OK: ask the owner, like a normal, polite human being; don’t secretly turn off someone else’s property. You have no right to take control of the TV, and your “Well, what about TV..does TV have the right..?” argument is just gibberish, not to mention ill-informed. Nobody appears on TV without signing a waiver…you don’t want to be broadcast, don’t sign.

But even if TV itself poses ethical issues, the unethical conduct of another NEVER justifies unethical conduct by you. You’ve written a long, rambling piece that doesn’t make a single coherent ethical argument, and it certainly doesn’t refute the slam-dunk conclusion that using TV-B-Gone is beyond justification. If someone talks too much, do you have a right to bind and gag them? If a neighbor’s stereo is too loud, is it Ok to cut the electricity? Do you even know what right and wrong are? Because I sure can’t tell from what I read here.

Something irritates you, and though it belongs to someone else and others in the room are using it, you think it’s ethical for you to unilaterally decide to turn it off. Indefensible. Unethical. Arrogant. Selfish. What part of “wrong” don’t you understand? What dictionary did you use to define “right?”

Go to the Cheesecake Factory and see how modularized freedom of choice has become. All I see anymore are modules! There is nothing anymore. It’s all gone. Your choices exist on a drop-down menu of that which is offered. The Cheesecake Factory offers EVERYTHING! Thus my point is moot. Pick what you want from a flummoxing menu and feel like you’ve only barely scraped the surface of what’s AVAILABLE. Next time, you say, you’ll pick something else.

No idea what’s going in and no idea what’s going out, you just give the masters of virtual insanity the right of way. After all, they do know what’s best, having seen the future with their own eyes and government contracts so they can regurgitate it back into our chirpy little fucking beaks. God I wish I would have fathomed what this song meant in the late 90’s, though there was little any of us could have done about it then either I suppose:

Oh yeah, what we’re living in (let me tell ya)
It’s a wonder man can eat at all
When things are big that should be small
Who can tell what magic spells we’ll be doing for us
And I’m giving all my love to this world
Only to be told
I can’t see
I can’t breathe
No more will we be
And nothing’s going to change the way we live
Cos’ we can always take but never give
And now that things are changing for the worse,
See, its a crazy world we’re living in
And I just can’t see that half of us immersed in sin
Is all we have to give these -

Futures made of virtual insanity now
Always seem to, be govern’d by this love we have
For useless, twisting, our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound - for we all live underground

And I’m thinking what a mess we’re in
Hard to know where to begin
If I could slip the sickly ties that earthly man has made
And now every mother, can choose the colour
Of her child
That’s not nature’s way
Well that’s what they said yesterday
There’s nothing left to do but pray
I think it’s time I found a new religion
Waoh - it’s so insane
To synthesize another strain
There’s something in these
Futures that we have to be told.

Futures made of virtual insanity - now
Always seem to, be govern’d by this love we have
For useless, twisting, our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound - for we all live underground

Now there is no sound
If we all live underground
And now it’s virtual insanity
Forget your virtual reality
Oh, there’s nothing so bad.
I know yeah

Of this virtual insanity, we’re livin in.
Has got to change, yeah
Things, will never be the same.
And I can’t go on
While we’re livin’ in oh, oh virtual insanity
Oh, this world, has got to change
Cos I just, I just can’t keep going on, it was virtual.
Virtual insanity that we’re livin’ in, that we’re livin’ in
That virtual insanity is what it is

Futures made of virtual insanity - now
Always seem to, be govern’d by this love we have
For useless, twisting, our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound - for we all live underground

Living - Virtual Insanity
Living - Virtual Insanity
Living - Virtual Insanity
Living - Virtual Insanity

Virtual Insanity is what we’re living in

Yay, Jamirquai!

…we forget that it isn’t our right to do it

There are no “rights”, unless you mean the rights of corporations. Corporate masters have made this very clear to those who are listening.

… Read the subtext and factor it into your ethical calculus.