For some reason my mind just races in the shower and I get all kinds of good ideas for blog essays while scrub-a-dub-dubbing in the shower. However, I forget most of them. I try to hang onto at least one idea, so that after I get out of the shower, dry off, get partly dressed, exercise, get completely dressed, eat breakfast and back at the computer, I can write it down. Often even that single idea doesn’t make it to the more permanent memory of my word processor. I really should learn to type in the nude while wet.
As you can see, I’m not the only one with this problem of wanting to take notes in the shower. It seems showering is well known for stimulating ideas for writers. Karen Woodward made a homemade scuba writing tablet with materials from Staples in “How To Write In The Shower.” However, Amazon has a ready made Scuba slate that’s cheaper than Karen’s put together solution. The problem with both solutions is erasing the board. But one of the customer reviews at Amazon suggested a Mr Clean Magic Eraser, which my wife has been buying lately, erases the slate well. Amazon also offers a larger Scuba slate. I ordered the smaller one for $7.78 with free Prime shipping.
The little scuba slate turned out to be good enough for now. Capturing my thoughts usually only takes 2-3 lines, and the small slate, about the size of of a trade paperback, can handle 4-5 notes on each side. I write with water streaming all over me and what I’m writing. Pretty cool. Problem solved.
However, I noticed there were other good solutions, include Aqua Notes, a waterproof notepad specifically designed for the shower. It’s $7.00 plus $3.99 shipping at the site for a 40 page pad, or $10 at Amazon. I’m going to try this next if the slate doesn’t work out in the long run. This solution could get expensive. However it has an advantage over the slate in that you can pull off a page and take it to the computer.
I expect the scuba slate to solve my immediate problem, but I’d like more elaborate permanent solution. I need a system for taking notes all the time, and from any location. My iPod touch has a good voice recorder app called Recorder. I used to own an Olympus digital recorder for dictating notes until I rocked on it with my La-Z-Boy. Digital recorders are great for in the middle of the night note taking, but I wouldn’t want to take one into the shower, or even a steamy bathroom.
But wouldn’t it be cool to have a smart home that constantly listened to me? Or even talked to me? Over the years I’ve seen various science fiction movies where houses had AI butlers built into them. Now wouldn’t that be cool? Of course I might go crazy talking to my house all the time. In the future they might have personal robots that I could chat with and they’d take notes, and be my very own Dr. Watson, but I can’t count on that now.
I created this blog to record my thoughts and called it Auxiliary Memory because I wanted to record my thoughts. I forget too easily, and I’m forgetting more all the time. I often reread my older blog posts amazed at forgetting ever writing them. There is even a movement called lifelogging to record everything a person does in their life, see “Lifelogging 101: How to record your life digitally.”
Now, I’m not actually interested in recording my whole life. I want to record ideas. I often write in my head thinking I’ll get up and write it all down later, but I don’t. What I’d really like is a brainstorming recorder. I just searched “brainstorming recording” on Google and got hits. See, everything I think about has already been thought of before. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one with these crazy ideas.
Ultimately I’d like a transparent way to record my thoughts, then mind map them with XMind, research and collect additional information and store that research in Evernote, and finally write it all up in an essay. Sooner or later some savvy young inventor will invent an app that does all those things at once.
When Microsoft rolls out Windows 8 they could make some extra corporate chump change by selling a new version of Windows 7 that’s designed for the “I hate Windows 8″ crowd. I have a feeling there’s going to be millions of Windows 7 fans that will swear they will give up their favorite OS when it’s pried from their cold dead fingers.
I’ve installed two pre-releases of Windows 8 so far, and I just don’t like it. Sure it has some slick new functions, but I just don’t like the way it looks. I keep trying Mac OS and Linux, but I prefer Windows 7 by light years. I just don’t want Windows 7 to go away.
I build my own computers and I worry that Microsoft will stop selling Windows 7. So Microsoft, I’d like to buy a copy of Windows 7 that I could put on any machine I build in the future. I know that operating systems only have a limited supported life, but I’d like to stretch my use of Windows 7 until I die. I’m 60, and I only expect to live another 15-20 years.
Y’all are still supporting Windows XP which came out in 2001, so I should at least get another 12 years out of Windows 7. The trouble is the weird activation restrictions. I don’t blame you for copy protecting your product but it does make my plans more difficult. How about selling a version of Windows 7 with some kind of activation scheme that ties it to me and any machine I build for home use. It would be nice to also be able to buy a Family pack version for 3 machines.
I know it’s mean of me to call your new baby ugly, but I’m sure you’re used to old farts not wanting to try newfangled ideas. Just whip up some kind of marketing campaign – Windows 7 Forever – and make a few extra bucks off us stick-in-the-muds. I really don’t want to switch to Mac OS and Linux is perennially clunky.
What if there was a way to organize everyone’s photographs into a database we could all share and use in ways we never imagined?
Google Maps Street View is a 3D database of photos organized by location. What if we used the street locations to pin copies of our photographs? What if we made Street View 4D, so not only could we walk up and down virtual streets, we could walk up and down them in the past?
Here’s a March 2011 Street View photo of a house my family moved into in 1958, and left just after JFK was killed in November, 1963.
And here’s a picture of me, Patty, my sister Becky, and Jodie taken Christmas 1958.
As you can see, they have remodeled the house so that it doesn’t look the same (note the faucet in both photos).
Here’s another picture with my sister and Patty older, along with my neighbor Michael Kevin Ralph who lived in the house with the awnings.
How many people have lived in that house in the last 50 years? What if we all pinned our photographs to that house in Street View? I have no photographs of the inside of that house, but I’d love to look inside it. Maybe Michael Kevin Ralph’s mother took some photos when were there. I have a photo of a birthday party at Patty’s house down the street.
I could use Street View to walk up and down S.W. 37th Street, Hollywood, Florida and see old friends. I often think of that old Lake Forest neighborhood. I could follow the way we walked to school and see photographs that were taken in long forgotten classrooms, or to the 7-Eleven or Kwik-Chek were we bicycled to get Cokes and RC Colas.
Not only would this let us return to past locations, but if we find photos pinned to old locations we might find old friends to reconnect with. I wonder if Patty or Michael Kevin ever visits this street on Street View?
What if I wanted to go to New York City in the 1930s. There must have been millions of photographs taken along its streets. What if I wanted to visit where my father grew up in downtown Miami in the 1920s and 1930s. How many photographs were taken in those years that could be pinned in this database?
If enough photographs were tagged to Street View eventually we’d have Street View maps of the past. We could even walk into homes if we had the photos. If we had enough photographs we could stitch them together in virtual reality simulations.
Not only could we leave photographs, but we could notes and annotate locations with our memories.
Can you imagine what we could all do with such an invention?
Many Republicans are drawn to simplified tax plans that use graduated flat tax rates for federal income taxes. I’m a liberal, but I also find the idea interesting. Now the chance of such a system being implemented is very close to zero, but it’s still an interesting topic.
Why do simplified tax systems have no chance? Well, if we had a flat tax, there would be no deductions. Levying tax breaks gives lawmakers power. Law makers have various forms of power. They can regulate and not regulate, they can tax and not tax, they can spend and not spend. If we went to a flat tax our leaders would lose one-third of their tools of power. Can you imagine that?
If we went to a flat tax system think of how many millions of people we’d put out of work. First, many that work at the IRS would be added to the unemployment rolls. But then think of all those bean counters and lawyers that work at corporations whose careers depend on finding tax loopholes, those people wouldn’t be needed either. Then companies like Turbo Tax and HR Block would go out of business too. And think of all those little people who do people’s taxes every year would also be out of work. And what about lobbyists? There would be less work for them too.
All-in-all, if we went to a flat tax system it would put millions out of work. Our complicated system of federal taxes is a never-ending economic stimulus package. Is getting rid of it even possible?
The government could enact a flat tax so we didn’t even have to prepare annual tax forms – just take their cut in every income transaction. They could come up with a graduated flat tax so most people would end up paying the same or less than what they do now and the government would earn just as much money without all the complications. Most advocates hope they would pay less and that tax cheaters would pay more, and the privilege would pay the same as the those people without influence. Of course that means those with connection to power would pay a lot more. Are they really going to back such a system?
Theoretically, a flat tax would be fairer, until lawmakers tried to reintroduce the first exception, then it would get complicated all over again. A flat tax depends on lawmakers giving up their power to help certain groups or endeavors with tax breaks. Will that ever happen? I don’t think so. Can you imagine such a world? Businesses couldn’t wheel and deal for favors.
And what if this extended to states and cities. One tax for all. How could states entice companies into their borders without tax break incentives? But wouldn’t that also be fairer for competition if everyone had to pay the same taxes? Could we survive in a society where all individuals and corporations were treated absolutely the same by the taxman?
People get home mortgage deductions because the government wants people to own homes. That kind of social influence would be over. Is that good or bad?
What if the government eliminated tax havens and all other forms of “legal” tax evasions so there was no way to to skip out on taxes. Just kill off accounting chicanery, tax-law loopholes, or off-shore three-card Monte, and the issue of how much people or corporations paid in taxes were no longer an issue for debate – could we handle such a society?
For people who take the standard deduction every year a flat tax wouldn’t be a big deal, but for those people delight in adding up their deductions and lowering their tax bill, a flat tax might be a bummer. Some people hate to pay taxes and will do anything they can to lower their tax bills. If they can’t shoot for zero taxes I doubt they will be happy. What happens if everyone pays the same? I think a certain percentage of the population would revolt at such egalitarianism.
And should everyone pay the same? Do some people do things for society that merits lowering their taxes? Will the go-getters of society be happy if their efforts are taxed in a higher bracket than the indolent? All flat tax proposals depend on the idea that the poor pay a flat rate less than the rich. Could we come up with a rate and rational that will satisfied the rich? Currently the rich live in higher tax brackets, but they get the chance to lower their taxes with our complicated tax system. If we had a simple system, there would be no hope for them.
Right now the rich protest they pay at a higher tax rate than the poor, so they are being penalized as individuals. We could think of that in another way, we could create a flat tax saying that norm for all humans is to make $100,000 a year. If you are unfortunate enough to make less we’ll put you in a lesser tax rate for your suffering. But should someone making $250,000,000 a year pay at a different rate than someone making $100,000 or $10,000? Are we taxing the person or the income? Is a rich person different form a poor person in the eyes of the law? We could consider income like pollution. The bigger the impact you have on the environment, the more taxes you pay. It’s actually very hard to justify how to tax people. If a person only makes $14,000 and the government makes them pay $1,400, is that the same as someone who makes $140,000 and has to pay $14,000, or someone who makes $140,000,000 and has to pay $14,000,000. Does 14 million hurt as much to a super-rich person as $1,400 hurt someone on minimum wages? But if the super-rich have a 20% flat tax, they’d be paying $28,000,000. They’d still have $112,000,000 to spend that year, whereas the poor person would only have $11,200.
See how hard it is to make a fair tax system. I suppose we could add up all the expenses for the country and then divide by the 313,000,000 people who live here, and everyone pay their fair share. But then many people would owe more than they earn. That’s why the rich have to pay more.
As far as I can foresee, I can’t imagine a flat income tax system ever passing Congress.
Pay attention to machines around you. Pretend you’re Darwin observing their habits. It’s pretty obvious they’re evolving, and they have a parasitic relationship with us. Biological life arose in the medium of water, machines are rising out of an ocean of humanity. Most people think of evolution only in terms of biology, but it can be applied to cosmology, particle physics, and now mechanical evolution. Scientists have often wondered if life could be based on something other than carbon, well, we’re seeing beings of silicon evolve right in front of our eyes.
The First Law: Machines Are Becoming More Intelligent
Like single cell animals being outwitted by multi-cell organisms, and the animal kingdom being dominated by humans, machine evolution is moving towards smarter machines replacing dumber. Generally we think of machines as getting more complex or having more features, but if you compare an iPhone to an old rotary phone, it is more complex, does more, but more than that, it’s far smarter. We call them smartphones and dumb phones, and the dumb phones are going extinct.
The Second Law: Machines Are Becoming More Functional
Machines that do more are replacing machines that do less. Modern sewing machines can do what once took several machines. Modern refrigerators are no longer just boxes of cold. A smartphone replaces a cell phone, portable GPS, MP3 player, PDA, camera, video camera, organizer, watch, alarm clock and could replace a laptop and ebook for some users. My desktop ate my CD player, record player, radio and typewriter. I can’t tell if my computer is going to eat the TV, or if the TV will eventually eat the computer. Even a simple machine like a knife evolves to serve more functions.
The Third Law: Machines Are Evolving Towards Simplicity
Machines want to have fewer parts, especially ones that don’t move. Charles Babbage tried to build a machine that was too mechanically complex to survive. 19th century machines were overwhelmingly complex, they had to evolve into simpler machine we saw in the 20th century. But even those machines are too complex. Soon solid state drives will replace hard discs, and people will abandon all forms of optical drives. Floppy drives disappeared long ago. But even more mechanical machines like washers, dryers, cars, HVACs, etc. are moving towards fewer moving parts. Clocks used to be marvels of complexity, and now they are solid state circuits. Electric cars have far fewer parts than gasoline powered automobiles.
The Fourth Law: Machines Are Evolving Towards Efficiency
A Kindle ebook can last weeks on one charge. A Toyota Prius uses less gas than a Edsel. A modern air conditioner uses a fraction of electricity than a unit back in the 1950s used. Modern jetliners can fly further and faster on less fuel than their ancestors.
The Fifth Law: Machine Evolution is Driven by Humans
Human evolution was driven by survival of the fittest adapting to changing environments. Machines evolve though the competitive needs of people. One day they will evolve from their own competitive nature, but until then humans are the driving force of machine evolution. Ultimately we’ll cross breed and form cyborgs.
In recent years TV makers have been adding features from the Internet (Netflix, Pandora, etc.) to their sets and calling them Smart TVs. Let’s imagine the trend continuing so that we have Genius TVs – what features would they have? Do we really want them?
Right now we have many devices, services, apps, sites that all work in different ways. Smart devices are ones where two technologies blend together, like Bluetooth consoles in cars recognizing Bluetooth smartphones so you can have hands free phone calls while driving. To make them smarter, they can also be GPS screens, rear view videos, engine monitoring, radios, CD players, etc. Genius devices are one that blend in many technologies and make them work together. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Broadband, USB, TCP/IP are all enabling technologies that bring electronic devices together.
In a way, all of this is very scary because we’re making machines smarter and smarter. If you’ve ever read John Varley’s classic story, “Press Enter ■” you’ll know what I mean, but for right now we’re all rushing headlong into convergence of intelligent machines. Most people love their gadgets but often get overwhelmed in how to manage them. That’s why inventors work so hard to let machines talk to one another so they can figure out how to work together without human intervention.
This also reminds me of scenes from the dystopian film Fahrenheit 451, based on the classic Ray Bradbury novel, and of course, Big Brother screens in Nineteen Eighty-Four. I’m in love with gadgets, but such gadgets haven’t always been portrayed well in science fiction. And there was HAL 9000 of course.
Our machines are getting smarter to make it easier for us to be dumber.
Here’s an example. When I sat up my new Roku I had to add each channel I wanted, and for each channel the Roku would give me a code that I had to enter in at a web browser. For Netflix I went to http://www.netflix.com/roku and entered the code, and then went back to the Roku to see that I had been validated. In the future I could validate my identity with the Roku, and then it could go down its lists of channels and automatically check with each service to see if I had an account and configure the Roku device for me. The smarter Roku would know more about me, and have access to my accounts.
With a Genius TV, I should be able to identify myself and it should configure itself automatically for everything I like to do with its designed features. It will be a video phone, and so it will get my contacts from the cloud, so I can say, “Call Connell” and it will know who I want. Or I could say, “Take me to the next episode of Breaking Bad I want to watch” or “I want to look at all the photographs of my father” and it would know what I want to do. Of course, I’ll be developing a symbiotic relationship with my Genius TV.
If you’ve ever used the program Zite on the iPad you’ll know how a program can consolidate your interests with articles appearing on the Internet each day. I should be able to tell my Genius TV that I’m interested in learning about how people lived in Boston from 1850-1875 and it would go get me diaries, photos, newspaper articles, books, etc., and format them in an interesting way to process all the data. This goes way beyond Google. I’m talking about a digital Jeeves like in the P. G. Wodehouse books who is smarter than me, and who can take care of all my needs. Siri is the first step to a Genius TV. But what if we all had our own personal Siri that really knew us?
A Genius TV must be completely Internet aware, not just design to work with a few services like a Roku box. It needs to be voice activated. It needs to integrate with my Internet provider, phone provider, my TV provider, broadband provider, my cloud services, my home security provider, utility provider, security cams, home network, cameras, and even local over-the-air TV and radio. I mean, this sucker’s got to be aware of everything. Before we all run headlong into this future, I really do recommend reading “Press Enter ■” if you can find a copy. [There are no legal copies I can link to, but just remember my warning. There are dangers to the future we’re all heading into.]
We won’t have an Einstein level Genius TV for years, but TVs on sale today are getting smarter all the time. So this essay should help you think about the possibilities the next time you buy a new TV. The simple way to look at it is to think about what devices that you own now that you can eliminate. Think how smartphones have eliminated so many older gadgets, well the same thing will happen to smart and genius TVs.
Here’s all the devices that’s connected to my current entertainment center in my den.
56” TV
Blu-ray player
CD/SACD player
Receiver
Roku
Home Theater PC
Old game unit
Ethernet switch
5 speakers
I picture a Genius TV being a larger wall mounted screen with maybe or maybe not a visible speaker bar, and that’s it. Elegant and simple. It can see me and I can talk to it.
I can buy the physical setup now if I’m willing to give up CD/DVD/BD discs and go without the computer and better sound I get from the receiver/amp. Right now Smart TVs don’t have PCs built into them. My current HTPC is bigger than the receiver, but I could buy one that’s smaller than a Mac Mini. Music, movies and radio are all available via a computer now, so I could do a lot of consolidation now by buying a smart TV from Sony or Samsung, and a Zotac mini-PC.
I could fake the start of a Genius TV by buying a Smart TV and adding a small computer like this one,
However, a real Genius TV will have a fully functional computer built-in. An iPad screen has more pixels than a HD TV, and smartphones and tablets now have 2 and 4 core CPUs. They are small and getting smaller and cheaper. Adding one to a TV set is a no brainer. Just think of of a smart TV as a 60” iPad. Once you have a computer inside your TV you are connected to the world. You don’t need a stereo receiver to get local AM/FM radio because you can get internet radio from all around the Earth. TVs are built with 5.1 surround sound now, so we can jettison the receiver. See how it eliminates older devices?
Most people have already given up CDs and DVDs, and BDs never really caught on. But we’ll also give up game discs, paper photographs, and even paper personal records, books, newspapers and magazines. The closer we get to Genius TVs, the less clutter we should have in our lives. We’ll have different size screens. Now’s the time to ask if this is good or not, because we’re already moving in this direction as fast as inventors can invent. Machines have eaten our music, and they are about to eat our books.
Contemplate everything you use a TV or video screen for now. How could you converge all of these activities into one elegant device? One that would integrate or replace your other devices. You’d still need a smartphone, and maybe a tablet, but all the TVs and computers in your house could be replaced by a Genius TV in each room, like the wall screens in the houses in the classic film Fahrenheit 451 shown above.
What all do you do with your TV, computer, phones and other gadgets in the house now?
Watch over-the-air TV
Watch cable/satellite/broadband TV
Watch DVD/Blu-ray discs
Watch Roku, AppleTV or similar Internet TV devices
Play video games with Xbox, Wii, Playstation
Use a computer connected to your TV or display
Skype
Video picture frames
Play family videos
Look at family photos
Listen to AM/FM/satellite music with a receiver hooked to TV
Listen to subscription music via the internet
Listen to ripped music on a hard drive
Watch pay-per-view TV
Run computer programs
Use tablet/smartphone apps
Use smartphone
Read books
Take an online course
Play DVD courses from The Teaching Company, or other educational training
Record shows with DVR
Medical monitoring
Web cameras
Security cameras
Okay, you get the picture. Now think of the electronic components involved:
Screen with 1920×1080 resolution
TV tuner
Ethernet networking, wired or wireless
Cable/satellite tuner
Roku/AppleTV/etc. tuner
Computer
Sound/speakers
Hard drive
DVD/Blu-ray drives
Lots of clickers to control each device
Computers, tablets, ebooks, smartphones, GPSes, etc.
But let’s simplify this system.
1920×1080 screen (or 2048×1536 or 4096×2160)
Electronic brain – or TV/CPU
Soundbar
Like the old component stereo systems of old, it’s easier to build and maintain a system from parts, that way you can upgrade or replace any part without replacing the whole. The TV/CPU would have components itself. Power supply, motherboard, memory, SSD drive. It’s time to get away from optical drives, so let’s just assume our Genius TV won’t use DVD or Blu-ray, but the TV/CPU could have a slot for a drive for be backward compatible for those people who collected thousands discs and can’t part with them.
Den and living screens would be wall mounted, and they would include a video camera. I picture soundbars now, but even they could be shrunk or hidden so all we see is the big screen. That leaves us to imagine the TV/CPU. They could be designed to easily hide in various kinds of furniture or also wall mounted. They would need two wires, one for the power and the other for TV/Internet, which is now coax, but that wire could be redesigned into a wireless network. Computers are becoming powerful enough, and wireless networking fast enough, that we might only need one TV/CPU brain to control all the screens in the house. Our Genius TV could be completely hidden away, near where the fiber optic cable comes in from the street.
Of course, the controllers (clickers, keyboards, mice, game controls, motion sensors) for each screen in the house would be wireless, and we’d need them until which time we perfect human-machine verbal communication, and the video cameras that watch us can read our every movement and intent. One day it will be just intelligent screens and people.
I think TVs should have full computer power, but not need Apple or Microsoft operating systems. They will use those OSes for the foreseeable future, but eventually that will change. I picture Genius TVs more like giant tablets with personalities. The current iPad has more screen resolution than a HD TV. Imagine if your TV had a library of apps like you find at the Apple or Android app store and could talk to your as easy as you talk to your friends?
Isn’t it time we have a world standard operating system? So any screen size can run the same apps? Once the screens become Geniuses, it won’t matter what OS they run, they will be smarter than us anyway.
If all our data is in the cloud, would we even need a SSD drives? Wouldn’t 16-32gb of local memory for each screen handle it all? After the optical drive disappears won’t hard drives disappear next?
Can you imagine the opening menu on this Genius TV?
TV
Movies
News
Magazines
Music
Audiobooks
Internet
Apps
Videophone
Games
Photographs
Videos
Documents
Security
Medical
Or would we even need a menu if it was completely voice activated? Most people can’t imagine the possibilities. I’m sure I’m just barely scratching the surface of what’s possible. Could you have have imagined the iPhone back in the 1990s? Look at the video on this page about Pebble watches. It’s a Bluetooth watch the integrates with your smartphone. This synergy between two devices, watch and smartphone, creates surprising spinoffs. Combing TVs, computers, internet, cable TV, phones, AI, etc. will produce some surprising spinoffs we can’t foresee now.
One thing that’s sweeping the country right now is online education. At first in colleges but also for K-12 schooling too. If you seen TED talks and Khan academy videos, imagine what a Genius TV could do for education. Combine it with Skype and Google Hangout and home schooling becomes more social. But instead of studying with children from the same school, or district, it would be possible to find other students anywhere in the world to form a study group.
If you have a 14-year-old kid who is fascinated by chemistry, you can hook them up with other 14 year-olds also fascinated by chemistry, and have them watch lectures from the very best chemistry professors in the world, and then have them remote view chemistry laboratories that are doing real chemistry. Suddenly a TV becomes a lot more than a TV. And computers become more than computers.
What happens if politics becomes truly participatory? Why let just 100 senators vote on a bill, when anyone who is interested could participate? TV has always been passive. The Internet and computers are active. Combining live events with the internet and TV screens should produce endless forms of real-time two-way/multi-way social networking.
What happens when your computers, TV, utility meter, security system and medical monitors mind meld into one system? Is it a computer? Is it a TV. Do we need a new name? Let’s not pick HAL 9000. We’ll interact with large wall sized screens, so we’ll think we’re talking to a TV, but one that’s very smart. Not some box that just passes on hundreds of video feeds. As we add more intelligence to these devices won’t they seem more intelligent and individual?
Read Wake by Robert Sawyer. No, I mean it. You need to be prepared for the future. There are science fiction stories that can help you imagine this future better than I can. Read Rudy Rucker’s The Ware Tetralogy. People are all nuts over vampires, zombies and werewolves right now. Those undead creatures aren’t real and won’t happen. Intelligent machines are happening. Pay attention. We’re all gadget crazy, but what happens when our TVs do become geniuses?
Millions of people have dropped cable and satellite TV in the last few years. Some have done it to save money during a recession, and others because they are tired of ever increasing cable bills, or being forced to buy TV channels the don’t watch. Recent news reports say the average American is paying $100 a month for TV, that it will be $123 by 2015, and $200 a month by 2020.
Even the people who continue to subscribe to cable and satellite services complain about too many channels, bad service and growing bills. When will the pay TV industry wake up and think, “Hey, the customer is always right!” A friend of mine got mad when his cable company charged him $50 to fix his cable service he was paying over $100 a month to use – shouldn’t something you buy be in working order? He wasn’t ready to quit cable completely, so he took his service down to the $29.95 basic rate. He’s still mad and thinks of giving up cable completely.
I gave up cable because I got tired of paying for a zillion channels I didn’t watch. I wanted a la carte pricing but cable companies want to bundle their services. If you want to know why, look at this chart I got from “Hate Paying for Cable? Here’s Why.” You’ll probably need to click on the image to see the larger version to read it. This is an example of what cable/satellite companies pay for each network to get all those channels they offer.
I don’t watch sports, so I would be paying over seven dollars a month for sports channels I don’t watch. WTF!!! I recently tried to get U-verse to sell me just Turner Classic Movies (TCM) which this chart says this cabled company pays 26 cents a month per subscriber, but I’d have to pay AT&T $80 a month to watch the one channel I wanted. Sure I’d get 200 other channels, but I only wanted TCM.
By the way, that chart is old. A newer article says ESPN is $4.69 and TNT $1.16 (“How ESPN Is Making Your Monthly Cable Bill More and More Expensive”). This is like going to Target to buy toilet paper and being forced to buy a pair of pants, a quart of motor oil, a bottle of shampoo, a comb, a gallon of Clorox, and 200 other items just to be able to leave the store with butt wipes.
But you can see why cable networks want cable companies to bundle their stations. Take ESPN. For each million homes forced to buy ESPN, they contribute $4.69 million per month to ESPN. However, if we went to a la carte pricing and only 500,000 per million wanted ESPN, and ESPN wanted to make the same amount of money, then they would have to charge $8.38 a month to the people who wanted it. Which would probably make many of those 500,000 subscribers think even more about if they really wanted ESPN.
If we have a la carte pricing, I doubt Comcast or U-verse would sell me TCM for 26 cents. But I’d be willing to pay $10 a month for TCM, but I’m not sure how many other TCM fans would be willing to pay that much. But for a la carte to work, instead of shaking everyone down for 26 cents a month, TCM fans would have to pony up more, maybe a lot more, or TCM would go out of business.
If we had a la carte pricing, many cable stations would go out of business. Bundled pricing is keeping these channels afloat. If the goal is to have hundreds of television networks, bundling is the way to go. But most cable customers bitterly complain about buying channels they do not want, and it’s the reason why cable bills keep growing and growing.
Cable and satellite companies need to get right by their customers. What they need to do is provide a base service, say $19.95 that provides a HD DVR/modem box and the local stations. HD is standard with free over the air stations, so quit being a dick and charging extra – and it will simplify things for both the customers and you.
DVRs should be standard too. Quit finding ways to charge extra for what should be standard, that only annoys the customer. And don’t charge for fixing the system when it’s broke. We’re renting a service from you, it should be reliable and high quality. Even at $19.95 a month for the base system with just local channels, pay TV services should be able to make a profit at this level.
Then offer an onscreen menu that customer’s can control from home that shows all the channels, pay-per-view, on-demand channels and other services with the monthly costs for each. Let them sign up with their clickers – no annoying phone calls. I bet you can make the same profits or more by pricing the channels individually. The only downside will be that the total channels will go from 200-300 to maybe 50-100.
Since I gave up cable TV I learned just how good 1 channel can be. I have a home built DVR (HTPC) and what I mainly record is PBS. It offers more top quality TV than I can watch. If you distilled hundreds of channels, with mostly crappy content, into dozens of channels with mostly quality content, the perception of your product will vastly improve.
I think most homes will be happy with 10-20 “a la carte pay” channels. Having fewer channels makes watching TV less stressful. To much choice can be painful. Their cable bill could be as high or higher than it is now, but it would reflect exactly what they wanted.
If such a system was available I’d go back to being a cable subscriber.
In the future there are other changes cable companies could make to make their customers happier. Get rid of the cable box. That would reduce clutter and a clicker. Work with TV manufacturers to make smart TVs work with cable/satellite feeds and develop standards. DVRs should be built into TVs. A SSD drive would not take up much space. It could be user replaceable. Or make TVs with 128-256gb SSDs built-in, with a slot for customer’s to add an additional drive.
A TV could be built to do TV, Internet, video games and music that uses one clicker plus game controllers. One cable, from a cable/satellite/broadband company could provide all content. And build your systems with self-diagnostic awareness so we won’t have the aggravation of feuding with your company over intermittent problems. There should be no reason to send a cable guy to see what’s wrong. Your system should know what’s wrong, and if it’s involves something in the house, notify us to pick a time for your guy to come by – otherwise fix the outside stuff without bothering us.
And why fight Netflix – make it part of your lineup. Right now I have over-the-air stations I use the TV clicker to manage, and then HTPC content, which I use a wireless keyboard, and then Amazon and Netflix through a Roku box with another clicker, and watch Blu-Ray/DVDs with another box and clicker. Plus I manage sound with a receiver and another clicker. That’s a HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS! The next TV I buy should have all that crap built-in, requiring only one clicker.
If Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and other Internet TV services can work with TV manufacturers to get their content built right into the TV, why can’t cable/satellite/broadband companies? Sorry Roku, but it’s obvious that your 2 ounces of electronics could easily be added to a TV set. And why not a computer and stereo receiver? If such integration happens, and TVs are moving that way now, having an external cable box is just stupid. I’m not an inventor but I can see which way the electronic wind is blowing.
Lastly, Hey TCM, go the Netflix/Hulu Plus route and set up your own Internet TV service. I’d gladly pay you $9.99 a month, but you might get more subscribers at $4.99 or $7.99.
In the early 1990s my friend Mike bought a copy of Minix that promised to be a home version of UNIX. At the time I was into GENIE, CompuServe, Prodigy and BBS systems. I even ran my own 2-line bulletin board. I liked the promise of UNIX and how it networked. Luckily I worked at a university and also had access to USENET and FTP. This was before the web. I eventually found my way to a USENET group that talked about Linux, and it was free. At the time I was hesitant to spend $69 for Minix, so Linux intrigued me. However, the instructions for getting the code, making the install discs, and installing Linux were daunting. I’ve forgotten all the details, but it involved a DOS program for making the floppies, and I had to make a bunch of floppies. This might have been Slackware, but I don’t remember. It was a long way from Ubuntu 12.04.
After much work with FTPed files, I finally got Linux going on an old machine, but I was frustrated that it wouldn’t do any of the things I normally did with a computer at the time. It was neat, but Linux wasn’t ready to be my computer OS. After that I’d try Linux again and again, as it evolved, hoping it would become something I’d want to use as my full time computer system. I remember I was so excited when I got Yggrasil and I could install Linux from a CD. I could install it from the CD, but I couldn’t mount the CD afterwards. This was before standard IDE drives and each CD device had its own drivers. I can remember being so happy the first time I finally got Linux to mount a CD.
Then came Redhat and things got much easier. Over the years Linux distributions got so easy to install that it was almost nothing to throw Linux on a computer, but I always took it off almost as fast. After Windows 95 came out, and then Windows 98, using Microsoft got addictive and standard. I got used to all the popular programs and games and it was just painful to try and switch to Linux.
And why did I want to switch? The whole open source programming movement was so appealing. The idea of free and DIY made so much sense. I thought Linux would catch on and everyone would eventually make it their OS of choice. But that never happened. Linux has become a standard for servers and supercomputers, but for desktops it’s never been able to compete with Windows and Macs because they have so much commercial software that’s a breeze to install and use. It’s a breeze now to install Linux, but adding other programs, especially those not prepackaged for a specific distribution, can still be a major headache.
I could switch to Ubuntu or Mint today and do most of what I like to do on a computer, but with programs that are clunky compared to the slick ones I use on my Windows 7 machine. If I was truly tempted to switch operating systems it would be to Macintosh OS X, but even OS X is a pain to use after being addicted to Windows all these years.
I’ve been waiting for a long time for the Linux desktop to surpass Windows, and KDE and Gnome have come a long way, but desktop Linux just never catches up. Most of the people reading my blog will not even know what I’m talking about because Linux is so esoteric. Over the years I’ve talked a few people into trying Linux. Linux is great for people who only use Firefox or Chrome to do everything they do on a computer. But I still like Word, Photoshop, Audible Manager, iTunes, Rhapsody, Spotify, Webshots, and many other Windows based programs. But even if I was totally cloud based in all my apps, I just prefer Chrome on Windows much more than Linux or the Macintosh.
I recently install Kubuntu on my home Linux box so I could play with Amarok on Linux, but I quickly grew disappointed with it. I loved how Amarok will find lyrics to display as it plays songs, and the program is rather nice overall, but it feels years behind other programs on Windows 7 and Lion. Spotify also does lyrics now, and they scroll as the songs plays, and the lyric being sung is highlighted. Spotify is blazingly fast, Amarok is not.
I keep waiting for Linux, like waiting for Godot. Linux is always on the horizon, close but far. For awhile Windows XP was having so many problems that I thought I jump over to Linux, but then XP shot ahead and became reasonable stable. Then Windows 7 came out, and I even prefer it over OS X. I’m not sure about Windows 8, but I’ll probably get hooked on it too. Ubuntu is trying hard to leap ahead, to catch up, but by the time it gets where it’s going, Windows and Mac OS X have shot ahead again.
I want Linux to be my desktop operating system because the Linux philosophy is just so much cooler than the commercial alternatives, but I’m hooked on their crack and I just can’t give it up.
It’s sad to admit, but I’m tired of waiting. Actually, I’m tired of thinking about computer operating systems. I started using computers in 1971, and I’ve been waiting over forty years for the future to arrive when computers would do everything, and I’d live with the perfect human/machine interface. I’m tempted to say Windows 7 is it, and I plan to go no further. I remember working with a guy who retired and bought a computer with latest WordStar and DOS who told me that system would have to last him the rest of his life. I wonder if he lived long enough to eat those words?
Computers have been the most fascinating invention in my lifetime, and I have put a lot of my life into learning them, but I think I have reached a point where I don’t want to care about them anymore, not as a hobby or topic of interest. I just want to use them. I want computers to be invisible and all I see if my work. I want the Wizard of Oz to stay unseen behind the curtain. Linux still demands too much working under the hood, getting grease on my hands, and requiring a toolbox of tools to keep things running. Windows 8 promises to be the operating system so mundane that it’s transparent.
I guess I’m ready for computers to just be magic rather than advanced technology.
The sad thing is technology changes too fast. What I learned about the IBM 360 forty years ago is all forgotten now, and there’s a long line of other machines and operating systems that came after it that I’ve forgotten too. I can’t remember how many programming languages and operating systems I’ve forgotten. Computer technology has been dazzling, mesmerizing, diverting, but what was it all for? I used to be able to use a slide rule as quick as some people could use a calculator, but that skill is gone too. Technology knowledge isn’t like scientific knowledge, or history or mathematics. It’s not cumulative. Gadgets just keep changing.
I think computers have become good enough that computer literacy is no longer required. They aren’t idiot proof yet, but they are getting there. At one time I thought desktop Linux would be the winner, but I think the race is over and Linux never made it to the finish line for the personal desktop OS. I also believe, sometime in the near future we’ll buy computers and we won’t even care what operating system is on them, or what version. We probably won’t even think of them as computers.
Until I wrote My Music DNA: The AM Era I never thought about how my life has been one long experiment with technology. We like to think personal technology started with personal computers, or for some people, the iPod, iPhone or iPad, but now that I contemplate the topic, I realize The Gadget Age started in the 19th century with photography, then the phonograph, movie camera and radio. Before gadgets if you wanted to hear music you had to go where the musicians were performing. If you wanted to see Paris you had to go to France.
Gadgets bring the world to us, whether it’s voice, music, images or movies. To a degree, books and paintings are proto-gadgets, they bring distant words and images to us created by people, but gadgets bring snapshots of reality, whether it’s images (photography), voice and music (phonograph, radio) or movies (film and television). A personal computer or iPad are dazzling devices because not only can they bring us voice, music, images and movies, they can process these media like a word processer processes words.
Although FM radio was patented in 1933, first broadcasts weren’t made until 1939, and stereo not added until the late 1950s, I didn’t get my first FM radio until 1968. FM radio took a long time to catch on. If you look at the Fidelity Potential Index Table you will see how sound recordings have evolved since the invention of the wax cylinder. FM music has more fidelity than the 78 and 45, but not as much as the LP. I had already started buying 45s and LPs before I got my first FM radio. My first FM radio came in a small console stereo I bought in 1968 from the Columbia Record Club, when I was 16. It was my first installment plan purchase. I don’t have a photo of my first console stereo, but it looked something like this.
Working as paperboy, cutting lawns, babysitting, and eventually as a bagboy didn’t not pay enough to buy all the music I wanted to hear, so my FM radio was a magical piece of technology. AM radio was all about hit singles, whereas FM was about albums. FM radio took me out of the teeny-bopper tunes and introduced me to a more mature level of album oriented music.
Among the albums I discovered back in 1968 on my FM radio was Truth by Jeff Beck, which I immediately bought. I was transitioning from AM radio to FM and I discovered new groups like Cream, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, Steve Miller, Grateful Dead, etc. I also got into the albums of artists I had discovered on the AM airwaves like The Byrds, Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, The Mamas and The Pappas.
I remember friends coming over in 1968 to hear the FM radio for the first time and being blown away – it was that different from AM.
My FM years didn’t last long, from 1968-1972. It was transitional technology. FM brought me a wide range of music from around the world, but it was a broadcast technology. I started buying LPs in the AM era, and by 1970 I had about 300 albums, but they were never enough. FM radio was my music news and how I discovered new music until I couldn’t handle the disc jockeys. At first, back in the 1960s, FM was considered underground music, but FM took over the hit parade as more people got FM receivers. At a certain point disc jockeys became so annoying I gave up FM and AM radio.
In 1969 I started getting my music news from The Rolling Stone magazine. For a brief while in the late 70s and early 80s I returned to FM to listen to WEVL, a volunteer radio station where music fans hosted music shows rather than professional disc jockeys. But for the most part I gave up radio listening in the 1970s. I became a album buying addict, buying over a thousand LPs before I switched to buying CDs in the 1980s, and I went on to buy 1,500 CDs before I phased into streaming music in recent years.
AM radio showcased top hits that were played frequently. AM hits of the 1960s provide the core music that Baby Boomers share. On any given day you could hear about 40-60 different songs.
FM radio offered a far larger range of music and styles until it was hijacked by the Top 40 format and became zany entertainment for automobile drivers. In the early days of FM if you tried hard enough you could hear 100-200 different songs in a day.
Buying LPs offered the choice of thousands of albums at better stores. And LPs allowed fans to own music, another kind of enabling technology.
With Internet shopping, collectors could buy a million CDs if they could afford it – then the MP3 revolution hit, and collectors could steal those million albums if they had the time, bandwidth and lack of ethics. Now with steaming music anyone can have easy access to over a million albums, or about 15-20 million songs for $9.99 a month.
iTunes and iPod reinvented the hit singles and almost killed the album. Streaming music is like combining FM and owning LPs with renting music, and it promotes the album.
FM radio still exists, as does AM radio and even LPs, but they are waning technologies that have been supplanted by the Internet. FM radio was a stepping stone technology that expanded the world of music over AM. FM radio is now a trailing technology – it fits a niche market, and has many competitors like Sirius Radio, a paid service, or Pandora Radio, free and paid, that offers music from a very wide selection of albums, and is a far superior to broadcast technology. Broadcast radio itself is a waning technology, even with HD Radio.
Streaming music offers the greatest selection and control – with instant access to most of the albums in print.
Strangely enough, it’s very hard for me to remember FM songs that I loved because of listening to the radio, versus songs from the same time period that I bought on LPs. The way I’ve discovered how to tell the difference is to listen to Play Cofi Jukebox at tropicalglen.com by the years below. The songs I loved but never bought are songs I can give thanks to FM radio technology. What’s surprising is just how many of those songs there were. Just click on a link and listen. How many of the songs did you buy, and how many are part of your memories because you listened to FM radio?
It’s strange to think that young people today may never have listened to an AM or FM radio, or bought a LP or CD. But I wonder, just what kind of technologies will supplant streaming music? Combining streaming music with a smartphone is about as close to thinking of a song and hearing it instantly telepathically as one can get. Will they ever invent brain transceivers that stimulate the neurons directly, and just bypass the ears? It’s just amazing to think of all the technological change in one lifetime.
But you know what? There’s one constant that doesn’t change. That’s listening to music.
We can’t know the future – not the specific details but we constantly try to imagine the future. Here are some impressive videos from Microsoft that shows what the future might be like following the trends of current technology.
The first one appears to have been made in 2009.
The next one from 2011 seems very similar, as if they were actually produced at the same time. Or we have to assume that 2019 seen from Microsoft from two years apart looks very much like.
Do these predictions please you, or scare you? It certainly seems the Geeks have inherited the Earth. But if you think about it, it’s a rather tame mundane view of the future. Adults still go to work and children go to school – the difference is the physical objects around us get more intelligent. But do we?
We like to think that people are evolving too and in some ways we are. We’re moving toward a society where everyone is equal regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation. However, if you think about it, we’ll all be treated equally fair, at least under the law, but will we be different? Greed will still coexist with charity, violence will exist with peace, law and order will still fight the lawless, the rich will get richer and the poor poorer.
I think if you plotted the evolution of humans it would show one long slight incline. If you plotted the evolution of technology we’d see the classic hockey stick graph.
These two videos show a future for rich people, nothing is implied for the poor. Without technology and money, the poor of one era seem to live pretty much like the poor of another era. I’d also imagine if you are politically conservative now, or liberal, you will be the same in the future. And I’d say if you are a bookworm that loves music and movies, then you’ll probably be a bookworm that loves music and movies in the future. Most people will even be living in the same house they are living in now.
We can’t predict the details of the future, like who will win the presidential race in 2012, or what life will be like as the Earth gets warmer, or will we find a solution to the financial crisis and the economic divide between the 1% and the 99%. There are an infinity of factors that go into shaping the future that keeps us from calculating what the future will be.
Some of the tech predictions we see in these Microsoft videos might come close to happening, but I doubt the tech will be as slick and clean as how they predict them. It would be interesting to find some videos from 1999 and 2001 that Microsoft created predicting 2009 and 2011.
