Tuesday 24 September 2013

I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE


There's a programme called Gogglebox that is a recording of people watching tv.  

That's it.

They sit at home watching TV and they are filmed and then that is put on TV.

And then we sit at home and watch them watching TV.

You see where this is going?

One day they won't need to make TV programmes any more. They'll just film people watching other people watching other people watching yet more people watching them.  

And in the end we'll all be watching each other watching us watching them.

A bit like those mirrors in either side of lifts that reflect to infinity.  

Or a mobius strip.  The mobius strip of TV viewing.

And then they'll be able to run re-runs of people goggleboxing.

How long before all that will be left will be goggleboxing.

People won't do anything or go anywhere.  They'll sit at home on padded recliners, with built in self-flushing toilets.  Food and drink delivered by conveyor belt straight into the TV room (which will be the only room) with the screen the entire size of a wall.  And each screen will record you watching it and relay it out to all the other screens.  And these goggleboxers will be able select who they watch watching them.

But that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

2 comments:

  1. I think you have seen the future Vivality. That last paragraph may have a grain of truth about it. Do you think we will all lose the power of our legs and turn into weeble dolls?

    Although the one-eyed monster tends to be Janus-faced, in that if you are selective you can still see informative programmes, unfortunately most of the time a tidal wave of effluent spills forth from the screen. I remember one old cynic on being asked about the rising popularity of telly and whether it was all for the good replied "Well if people were more interesting then we would place them in the corner of our living rooms and stare at them for hours on end"

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  2. Just as an afterthought on your wry observations about the one-eyed monster, but do you recall a Saturday evening show called Hole in the Wall. In a nutshell the contestants had to contort themselves to fit through cutout holes of varying shapes in a large polystyrene wall moving towards them. If you didn't get it right you ended up being unceremoniously dumped into a swimming pool. What made it worse for the contestants was that they were all wearing unflattering leotards. It was totally absurd! I remember thinking at the time this was truly the end of civilization and that we would be going through a decline and fall of Roman sized proportions.

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