"No one wants to watch TV on a cell phone!" Damn right. This one is going to be the biggest implosion of all time. Just like hand written Interfaces, voice recognition, tablet PC's etc. OK, they are still out there in minescule quantities, but just like cell phone TV... It was all going to be the "Next big thing!" Bullshit. Remember on the Star Treck movie when the crew is back in the 20th century and Sulu tries to talk to the computer. It aint going to happen 'til the 22nd century. Same for cell phone TV. Unless you have a fucking cell phone with a 36" screen.
Cheers/George
It hadn't occurred to me that the problem with cell phone tv is that cell phones aren't tv's. That's an elegant analysis and probably true. But I was thinking that the imminent failure of this particular media vector would be due mostly to potential users' fears of the explicit geeky sadness of doing something like sitting on the bus watching "friends" on your I-pod or cell phone. It seems to me that all of the other things we do while in public that save us from interacting are actually ways of interacting, albeit, dysfunctionally, by ignoring each other for good reasons. We began by reading, which is a defensibly noble pursuit. We weren't ignoring each other as such, we were just reading an important article/comic book/cheesecake publication and thus projecting an image of ourselves as well read/ cool/ horny. Then transistor radios arrived on the scene ("I'm not ignoring you, I'm just into this very important baseball game. As you can see, I am a fan.") Then portable private music systems came along and like the guy in the commercial we all could have our own soundtrack ("It's not that I'm ignoring you, it's just that this is the movie of my life not yours. You're just in it.") And now we're all on our phones or snapping pictures of the dilapidation all around us or text messaging our possies or blogging about apparitions of Jesus and Mary in various foods, so we're just really busy doing important stuff, not intentionally ignoring each other. But you see, I think deep down inside we all know that watching TV, even good TV, is a little shameful. Being immediately good at watching TV is an evolutionary adaptation that was in place for us before the environment that the adaptation suited even existed, like our weakness for refined sugar or cocaine. And at some level we are aware of this quality that TV has, that it fits our brains like a key in a lock, and this makes us a little guilty about it. It's too good to be good. And so I guess I'm wondering, are a lot of people going to be comfortable with being seen getting a fix in public?
You bring to mind another important component of watching TV in public.
Unlike with reading or listening to the radio or MP3's, people can not only see you watching TV, they can see what you're watching. Qua isolation strategy, mobile TV will fail miserably.
If TV fits our brains like a key, as you say, mobile video will attract, rather than repel, the undesirable encounter with our fellows -- the fear of which has led to the consistent rejection of videophones for more than a decade.
Bingo.
Commenting by HaloScan.com
