Internet and the Telly

The internet and television both have FAAAAAR to much in common. Most of what is out there--stuff you don't want to watch or see. Television has its Las Vegas, and other shows of negligently clad vixens and other means of soft core porn. The Internet slightly harder. Guess what takes up most of the space on television--ads. A thirty minute show now is about 17 minutes of show and 13 of ads. 43% of what we suffer through on the tube are salespitches. Ugh! Guess what the television with the keyboard intervenously plugged into it is also mostly ads. Exciting. It gets worse, based on a 2007 scientifically sound study of me surfing the internet for about an hour, most of the schtuff I read is an intellectual rerun. Read enough posts and you will find there are startlingly many of THE EXACT SAME posts here there and everywhere, nevermind they have "different authors."
Surfing the internet is great, but its like watching daytime soaps. There really is no content to anything there. You know it will never end, there will always be something new, yet so very little of it is anygood. Yet even inspite of all of this, in spite of knowing there are at least a hundred million other better, more productive things you could or should be doing, yet we watch on. Watching ever on our brain's writhing and melting all the while. Even several hours into the crap with our brains oozing out onto the floor. Even with intelligence insulted, our pocketbooks demanded, held ransom by the world or marketing; even while being numbed to content especially drugs, crassness, violence, sex and any other vice you want we watch on. Hopping, yearing, even longing for something, anything good to come on so we can watch just a little longer. Just frequently enough to keep us glued good things do come, but why must soooo much of the internet and television be wrought with CRAP!?

Quality. It has been posted and written of here: and elsewhere. It has been said that we have an inate sense of quality. Given a room full of people and presented with works of varying degrees of quality the "good" pieces can almost unanimously be recognized, yet the simple fact that there are so many posts on quality would seem to suggest that we are still struggling to define this idea, and to reconcile our ideas of what it whould be to the things that have quality. Perhaps maybe this difficulty in defining quality is the fact that we are imersed in so little of it. I have already complained at the internet and lack of quality on television. This is probably because both of these media are "easy" to produce material for. A new television show is produced every day every week every year decade after decade on hundreds if not thousands of channels. The internet grows at 186,000% per year according to one statistic. The shear volume and ease of producing material for both of these media have for the most part stripped them of much of their quality. Now admittedly there are still many fine products found within each of these spheres of thought, but some much of it isn't.

Even in the face of multimillion dollar (Not even surprised if soon to be multi billion dollar) movies with all of their high tech special effects and high paid actors, books are still better. Books allow you to use your own imagination to create the world of your choosing. Books will tell you things a movie never can. A book is a higher form of quality even than a movie in that books usually take longer to produce, they are more intimately tied with their creators. Books exude a quality that will not be matched until neurally tied viertual reality can be invented. When we have invented the machines necessary to make the world of our imaginations come to life, to combine the visual appeal of a movie with the intellectual draw of a book. That is power. (A power that would make a good science fiction, but that is for later.)
Ah, but here I have strayed. Is mine a work of quality, maybe. But with little or no editing and post post reading probably not as much as it could be. Drivel, maybe to someone. But it is my drivel, and that is probably the excuse that is shared around the world. So enjoy your drivel. May you all break free of your phrenic export bans, and may you never take the easy way out. Strive for quality, seek creativity, and go with the words of Longfellow from his Psalm of Life:

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!—
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,—act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Seek Quality and go with luck.