In the forum attached to the "PC Shopping Nightmare" tirade, someone posted a link to an article in Wireless NewsFactor that describes Intel's plans for the Entertainment PC (EPC), including the expected 2005 introduction of a chip containing a TV tuner. On October 11, I came across an article in the New York Times about Microsoft's latest efforts to integrate TV, among other things, into Windows. Some aspects of these two convergence initiatives sounded interesting, but TV/PC is one form of convergence that I suspect I'll pass on.
Don't get me wrong. My tirades notwithstanding, I like high-tech toys. In fact, some of the other EPC elements seem quite enticing, just not the PC/TV convergence part.
Why doesn't PC/TV convergence interest me? Let me tell you. (Did you think for a nanosecond that I wouldn't?) Despite being a world-champion worrier, I have never spent a moment worrying that, while working on my computer, I might miss the latest episode of a new "reality" show during which Betty Sue of Ohmigosh, Wisconsin, challenges her fears of insects and heights, and particularly insects at heights, by eating 27 live cockroaches while jumping out of an airplane. Furthermore, I may be one of only a very small group of people who feel this way, but I don't give a hoot about who will be America's (or Canada's, for that matter) next idol. Nor do I care who The Donald is going to fire or who is going to be the next person voted off some desert island, tarantula-infested jungle, or any other otherwise-uninhabited part of the planet.
Somebody please explain to me why they call these "reality" shows. Whose reality do they represent? Certainly not mine, nor that of anyone I know, nor, I suspect, the normal reality of the people on the show when they are not seeking their 15 minutes (OK, maybe 30 minutes or a few hours) of fame. Is the television industry so bereft of creativity and cash that they can no longer hire professional writers and actors capable of producing decent entertainment?
Of course, there is always television news. But if I see one more giggling newscaster bantering casually with his or her co-anchor while the world around them is engulfed in fires, floods, earthquakes, wars, murders, rapes, deadly diseases, famines, corruption, and other calamities and forces of evil, I'm going to toss my television out the window. Hopefully, it will land on a giggling television newscaster or, better yet, someone from FOX News.
If Intel and Microsoft want to get me interested in PC/TV convergence, they better put a lot more dollars into television programming rather than computer programming. I might be interested if the networks implemented a 24-hour schedule of reruns of the old Dick Van Dyke Show, M*A*S*H, and Seinfeld, but the vast majority of today's TV lineup does not interest me. Converging current TV fare with a computer just sounds like a waste of a perfectly good PC chip.
It's not that I'm against all convergence. I think that merging PDAs and cell phones is a great idea. I have an old PalmPilot and a cell phone. If I were sufficiently dexterous to look up a phone number on my PalmPilot and dial it on my cell phone, while standing somewhere without a table in sight, then I could probably have a promising career in Cirque du Soleil. Since I am not even close to being that nimble-handed, a converged cell phone/PDA is appealing to me. The only reason I don't have one now is that my cell phone company wants to charge me more than I want to pay to buy out the contract on my old phone. Within days or possibly minutes of my contract ending, I'll probably buy in. (I hope that no palmOne or RIM salespeople are reading this. I don't want to be inundated with sales calls for the Treo or BlackBerry.)
Another thing that bothered me about the EPC article is the input device that it suggested. The article quoted an Intel spokesperson as saying, "Instead of typing on a keyboard and moving a mouse around, most of the commands will be done with a remote control like you use on your television."
I should probably wait to see how this thing is going to work before I complain, but I'd rather beat the rush and rant now. I suspect that this will be another case of taking an input device that works well for one function and applying it to another purpose for which it is not the least bit suited. (For another example of that absurd strategy, see my "Text Non-Communication" tirade.) I have a vision of us overworking our fingers to type 26 alphabetic, 10 numeric, and a bunch of punctuation characters using maybe a dozen keys on our television remote, not to mention trying to navigate around the system using the same device, when a little bit of keyboarding and a simple mouse movement could do the same thing on a PC. This does not sound like a great leap forward to me.
So, let's add this up. They want to merge worthless television programming with a useful computer and probably give me an inadequate input device to operate it. I don't think so. Now you'll have to excuse me. I think there's an old Woody Allen movie on TV.
Joel Klebanoff is a consultant, a writer, and president of Klebanoff Associates, Inc., a Toronto, Canada-based marketing communications firm. Joel has 25 years experience working in IT, first as a programmer/analyst and then as a marketer. He holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science and an MBA, both from the University of Toronto. Contact Joel at
Joel Klebanoff is a consultant, writer, and formerly president of Klebanoff Associates, Inc., a Toronto-based marketing communications firm. He has 30 years' experience in various IT capacities and now specializes in writing articles, white papers, and case studies for IT vendors and publications across North America. Joel is also the author of BYTE-ing Satire, a compilation of a year's worth of his columns. He holds a BS in computer science and an MBA, both from the University of Toronto.
MC Press books written by Joel Klebanoff available now on the MC Press Bookstore.
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