Timeshifter
Here is an interesting Popular Mechanics article Professor Reynolds links to on the effects the DVR is having on our TV-watching habits:
Our Scientific Atlanta DVR is my wife’s favorite digital toy, and she has learned to postpone the start of her favorite shows by 20 minutes (a phenomenon known as “time shifting”), since that generally assures her that she can zoom through the commercials to catch up with the show exactly at its end. It’s more than just a convenience to her; she enjoys it as if avoiding commercials were a game, and chides me when I forget to fast-forward through the ads.
I actually don’t have a DVR, but I have long been very big —too big— on recording favorite programming to have to watch later and enjoy. Consequently, I am a slave to a rather large video library that probably takes up too much of my physical storage space. I no longer add to the burden, though, having given up that habit in one of those weird preoccupational shifts that sometimes come over me. Gave up smoking the same way. The bottom line is that there’s a lot of bullshit on the TV. Lots of degenerate and degrading and disgusting garbage. People must remember to not watch psychic garbage because it poisons their reason. What’s fun to do instead is to watch things that matter and which please and edify you. Rootedness and reinforcement of what we have seen and know is the surest defense against mesmerism. You know: all that “experiencing it again for the very first time” stuff.
