An Antidote to TV, TiVo, Walkman, and/or iPod Addiction

Addicted to your TV, TiVo, computer, cellphone, or iPod?

The new machines that were supposed to make life and leisure sunnier, more efficient and portable, and less arbitrary—the ones advertised to free us from the limits of older technology (the land-based phone, broadcast television and radio, the home stereo)—somehow devour more and more of our time and warp our critical judgment writes Christine Rosen in the New Atlantis.

From the New Atlantis website:

The age of personalized entertainment is here, and perhaps no technologies epitomize it more than TiVo and iPod, devices that give individuals total control over what they watch and hear. But will the age of “egocasting” really improve the quality of American culture? Christine Rosen looks at these technologies of fetish, and wonders whether we are losing the capacity ever to be surprised and improved by our cultural creations.

Those who consume media every day and who use the new technologies to do so, will be challenged by Rosen’s The Age of Egocasting. Her (rather long) essay will pause many readers—more than once, I should think—to consider how they are consuming media and using the latest technologies that deliver them. Print it out and read it. It may cure or curb an addiction you didn’t know you had. You’ll also learn something about the history and the creators of these machines that, besides making you feel like a lab rat, might resolve you to kick the habit.

The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society is published by the Ethics & Public Policy Center. Ms. Rosen’s Preaching Eugenics was published last year by Oxford Univerisity Press.