I bought a grape yesterday
A few days ago, while watching the documentary “America in Primetime,” I was struck by an interesting comment made by one of its participants.
“Yesterday I bought a grape,” he said.
He’d made the claim that primetime television, with its extended long-form shows, such as “The Sopranos” and “Mad Men,” has now found increasing audiences among the nation’s TV viewers.
That, despite the ubiquitous use of computer technology, television isn’t the time-waster it once was.
Computers, though, with the advent of “social networking,” have become the newest “boob tubes.”
After all, he asked, is it really of any value that people who live on Facebook are so enamored with it that they proclaim “yesterday I bought a grape?”
It was a point well-taken. Besides, who really wants to squint their way through “Lawrence of Arabia” on a cell phone?
I’m writing this on a computer that holds 16 gigabytes of memory. That’s 524,288 times more memory than the 1968 Data General Corporation’s $8,000 computer with its 32 kilobytes of memory.
And I picked up my computer for a fraction of the cost.
I have two terabytes of hard drive, that’s only eight terabytes shy of holding the entire printed collection of the U.S. Library of Congress.
Yet, sometime today, I’ll saunter over to Facebook, and I’ll be able to comment on somebody’s personal portrait of a plate of spinach.
That’s the way it is these days.
Gone is the time when the only people in the world who could afford computers were those folks down at NASA, who’d use them to hurl billion dollar payloads, and human beings into space, and guide them safely back to earth.
I can now spend a few hundred dollars on a computer; a couple more on a camera; spend hundreds on a high speed internet connection, all so I might be able to post pictures of that squirrel I saw yesterday.
I love squirrels. And I want everybody I know to experience the bliss.
Even still, those “pix” are a bit costly.
Facebook, which seems to have “connected” people all over the world, is a fascinating experience.
I have Facebook “friends” I’ve never met. (Nor am I certain I’d even like to meet them)
All I know is they can post some political comment I might find myself in agreement with, and I’ll “like” it.
Or, they’ll make sure everybody on their “friends” list know they’ve just finished taking a bath.
Some people even take it a step further. They use something they call Foursquare, which allows you to tell hundreds of your Facebook “friends” where you are at all times.
I don’t know about you, but there are days when I don’t even know where I am. I’m not sure if I’d really like to tell dozens of people I don’t really know, that I’m out of the house.
“I’m at the store. Please come and rob me blind.”
It’s not that I’ve become particularly anti-technology. I still love it.
I jump into my car (although, at this age, that’s pretty much an overstatement), and I’m flooded with computer systems that tell me how to get where I’m going; if my tires need air; or that I can listen to a million radio stations at the push of a button.
For those things, I’m thankful.
I’m just not sure if I want to be in constant contact with people who feel their momentary loss of their bodily functions is worthy of a Facebook post.
And what’s with all of these cell phones?
Call me a dinosaur, but I’m resisting buying one of those iPads, iPhones, Kindles or whatever they call them.
I really don’t need to be in stuck to my Facebook page so that I can post how wonderful my day was when I got that colonoscopy. (It WAS painless, by the way)
There are times when I feel as if I’ll never meet another person in-person.
Instead, I’ll be forced to spend my days buying grapes, and telling people I’ve never met about the experience.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net