I’m not a gadget guy. Far from it. But I’m no Luddite, either. I welcome technological advances like most men welcome a new article of clothing. If I could really use it or I’d be eccentric or a burden on others if I didn’t have it, I’ll get it, but that’s the extent of my technological attraction.
There's one new gadget, however, that has me excited: The TV-B-Gone.
Invented by Cornfield Electronics, it's a keychain fob that lets you turn off most TVs, whether they're in your home, the pub, the airport, wherever. This universal remote control has only one button: the off switch.
The inventor, Mitch Altman, got the idea when he was with friends at a restaurant and found everyone glued to the TV instead of talking.
I can relate. As a person who frequents bars, there are few things as irritating as folks who go to the bar to watch TV and get annoyed if others are talking too loud or want to play the jukebox.
The TV infiltration of the bars is a break with tradition. The bar's predecessors, the taverns of Old England, were a place of amiable congregation and discourse, Samuel Johnson saying of them, “There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.” Likewise, in the United States, the early bars and taverns were, in the words of the 18th-century anti-drinking historian Daniel Dorchester, places where “motley assembly…came together to hear the news, gossip and talk politics.”
Drunk driving laws have made it harder to enjoy the social discourse found in bars, but I can deal with that (it's called “walking” or “calling for a ride” or simply saying, “I've had enough”). But I can't deal with the TV addicts in the bars.
And everywhere else. Have you been to the hospital lately? Waiting for a loved one in surgery, collecting your thoughts or quietly reading? Fat chance. TVs are blaring in every corner. I suspect hospitals use them to calm people. Are people today more likely to get agitated if they don't have the box to watch? If so, it's sounding like an addiction to me.
I also wonder: Why is the TV foisted on everyone? I want quiet; the person next to me wants a blaring TV. Why is his preference repeatedly taking priority over mine? Maybe all those TVs in public places should come with headphones. I share concerns about the iPod phenomenon and whether such technology is bottling all of us in our own little worlds, cut off from others. But the iPod is at least considerate to those who don't want to listen to what you're listening to.
Now don't get me wrong: I dig television. I've written elsewhere that I truly appreciate the amount of entertainment produced by that box. When you think about it, it's amazing: seventy-plus channels doing their best to entertain, and some doing a pretty decent job of it.
But I increasingly feel about the TV the way Max Picard, a lover of silence, felt about the radio: “Radio has occupied the whole space of silence. There is no silence any longer. Even when the radio is turned off, the radio-noise is so amorphous that it seems to have no beginning and no end; it is limitless.”
Am I just an isolated crank who doesn't share the rest of the nation's love of TV? Perhaps, but the response to the TV-B-Gone has apparently been huge. Within two days of posting it on the Cornfield Electronics website, http://www.tv-be-gone.com, the company was sold out, and Target stores have now started selling them.
Maybe the TV-B-Gone has appealed to an existential nerve in our culture.
After having the priests of Baal slaughtered, Elijah fled Jezebel’s wrath to Mt. Sinai and waited for the word of the Lord. “A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains and crushing rocks before the Lord — but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake — but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was fire — but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound,” a “still and small” breeze, and then the Lord spoke, “Elijah, why are you here?”
Although there are occasions when God uses loud or bright means of communicating — as when he spoke to Moses to the accompaniment of thunder and lightening — He seems to prefer the quiet, inauspicious route, as seen in His approach to Elijah and in His nativity.
If God speaks in the quiet, quiet-loving people are more likely to hear Him. Conversely, noise-loving people are less likely to hear Him.
And I fear a world dominated by TV will hear Him least.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Eric Scheske is an attorney, the Editor of The Wednesday Eudemon, a Contributing Editor of Godspy, and the former editor of Gilbert Magazine.
