From: cosc176t@menudo.uh.edu (Jason Asbahr)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,rec.arts.sf.misc,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: _The Turing Option_/Television
Date: 30 Aug 92 05:13:25 GMT
	<1992Aug26.192343.1144@kbsw1> <1992Aug27.160940.6008@auto-trol.com>
	<17lrnqINN91c@early-bird.think.com>
Organization: /posole/cosc176t/.organization


(A thousand pardons for having two posts of this.  One of the 
drawbacks of leaning back comfortably in a chair with a separate
keyboard is the occasional (and unfortunate) tendency to mash
keys under the arms of the chair...)
----

 Hans Moravec says:

>   You're right, technology is making things worse.  Let's get
>   rid of television.

I wouldn't mind getting rid of *most* of television, and changing
the nature of the rest.  An alarming (is it fashionable to be
alarmist?) portion of everyday television programming is fairly
mind-numbing stuff -- I try to avoid it whenever possible!

The daily news repeats so often, it's convenient to watch only
every other day, unless one hears of a really interesting event
somewhere in the world.  The *wonderful* thing about today's
incarnation of television is the ability to see things like
the celebration on top of the Berlin wall, while you sit
(or stand cheering) on the other side of the planet.

So, now that I'm complaining, what would I suggest?  Well, our
'net is pretty amazing all by itself...its chief advantage
over television is that it we can *respond* to it and through it...

Television would be truly useful if users could send Video mail,
watch and participate in both moderated and anarchic topic channels
(I'd love to see a few minutes of some of the projects mentioned
on comp.ai.philosophy!), even send fixed-time comment snippets to 
their local politicians...  (A nice trend of "electronic town hall
meetings" we're seeing this year...first with Perot, and then with 
Clinton...too bad it's not really participatory)...

This kind of video interaction is not a new idea, but it's one that 
I'm getting tired of waiting to see happen!  Perhaps with hardware 
JPEG or MPEG (or something more exotic) and ISDN (which is 
technically available in some parts of Houston, whatever barrier 
remains is primarily bureaucratic) and 200+ MIP personal machines
(next year, if one doesn't mind living under a bridge until one pays 
for it), it will happen soon.  

I wonder...  With limits on what PACs can donate, perhaps the
extra-padded ones would like to achieve similar effects by
funding a non-profit third party to install community "VideoBoxes"
which could send, say, sixty seconds of personal commentary to
a selected politician (or groups of them).  Is anyone interested
in setting up a non-profit organization in a year or so?   :-)


Jason Asbahr                           116 E. Edgebrook #603
asbahr@uh.edu                          Houston, Texas  77034
next@tree.egr.uh.edu   (NeXTmail)      (713) 941-8294  voice (summer)
asbahr@tree.egr.uh.edu (NeXTmail)      UH NeXT Campus Consultant

PS -- Young Mr. Harrison:  In the slightly-less-than-organized move
back to the dorms, I seem to have misplaced your telephone number.
If you would like to leave email or call, please feel free.  (I'll
keep looking...)

--
Jason Asbahr                           116 E. Edgebrook #603
asbahr@uh.edu                          Houston, Texas  77034
next@tree.egr.uh.edu   (NeXTmail)      (713) 941-8294  voice (summer)
asbahr@tree.egr.uh.edu (NeXTmail)      UH NeXT Campus Consultant
Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:5897 rec.arts.sf.misc:2727 alt.cyberpunk:4028