Word: screenful
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...glad to provide it. I test-drove the Flo TV service--one of several cell-TV options--on an AT&T LG phone, complete with a tiny retractable antenna that made it look like something you'd see in Couch Potato Barbie's living room. I set the tiny screen on a kitchen shelf and watched MTV as I peeled carrots. I tuned it to Morning Joe and balanced it inside my medicine cabinet, discovering an exciting new way to cut myself while shaving. So long as I had a signal and battery juice, I could go shopping, take...
Here's the important physical fact that separates online from off-line TV: you're holding something. Watching old-school TV, you flop on the couch and let the medium wash over you. New school, you hold a screen in your hand, balance a laptop or sit at a desk. There's a small but constant effort, the tiniest bit of physical feedback...
This makes me a much more impatient viewer. If a video doesn't grab me immediately, I kill it. But when a show does engage me, the connection is deeper. The wide-screen image is a foot or two from my face, filling my field of vision. The connection is tactile and intimate. (Coincidentally, I'm told the Internet is also a popular medium for porn.) As you lean in, focusing physically and mentally on, say, an episode of The Wire, watching becomes something more like reading...
...Screen, Little Screen...
Does this mean I'm ready to abandon that video altar in my living room? Oh, God, no. When my TiVo box was finally replaced, I ran back to my big-screen TV like a child reunited with his mother. (Not as fast as my kids, who quickly began TiVoing a new stash of Clone Wars episodes...