Channel flipping

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If you turn on your television in the evening you’re liable to see a confusing mish-mash of an advertisement promoting the Internet, the international network of the computer world.

This commercial is like giving Garfield the cat a remote channel changer and 500 channels to choose from. The subjects change so rapidly one can hardly grasp what each is about before he’s on to the next.

This is one legacy of television. We get serious, selective watchers who sit down to be stimulated and informed and we get experimenters who are more enamored by the capabilities of the medium than the content. This applies to both television and computers.

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The Internet is a ripe field for program flippers. When the public hears there is a source of all kinds of information, from pious to pornographic, from educational to entertaining, there is an urge to see if it can really be picked up on the household personal computer.

When radio first came in, some family member was always twisting the dial to pick up KOA Denver, KFYR Bismarck, WHO Des Moines. Those who had shortwave were picking up a South American religious broadcast and Moscow propaganda.

There is some advantage in these irritating channel switchers. If they can’t get the weather report from lower Patagonia, some of them are smart enough to figure out a way to change the system so we can get it.

In spite of this, I hope the Internet commercial is not the wave of the future.

If we all become channel flippers, what would be the use of developing programs that are more than 20 seconds long?