Some readers of this column peg me as being on the left of the political spectrum, but, just for the record, let me say that I've never been a fan of Karl Marx, the co-author of The Communist Manifesto. I'm a huge fan of Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo, but not Karl. I don't even know if Karl had a sense of humor. The Marx Brothers definitely did. More to the point, communism, which Karl Marx is most closely associated with, is a failed economic theory that, in my opinion, can never succeed other than through brutal dictatorship, and one can hardly call that succeeding. Furthermore, by "succeed" I mean only passing the much easier test of simply enduring, rather than the more useful and difficult test of maximizing economic outcomes, a test which communism is even more certain to fail.

Beyond writing about communism, Marx (Karl, not, to the best of my knowledge, Groucho, Chico, Harpo, or Zeppo) is also famous for writing "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people." This is usually paraphrased as "Religion is the opiate of the masses." Marx wrote those lines in 1844 in his Introduction to a Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of the Right.

I have no idea if that statement was true in Karl Marx's day. I'm old, but not that old. Rumors to the contrary, Karl Marx died well before my time. But I know it's not true today. Television is now the chief opiate of the masses.

According to the American Time Use Study conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, in 2004 Americans spent, on average, 0.12 hours per day in religious and spiritual activities. They spent 2.64 hours per day watching television. Which one are they more addicted to, religion or television? I couldn't find comparable numbers for elsewhere, but I have no reason to believe that the ratio is significantly different in other western nations.

Given how much time people spend in front of the television, are they really starved for opportunities to view it? I don't think so. At least one company disagrees with me. Sling Media of San Mateo, California, sells a gadget called Slingbox that lets you watch your home television set, including anything on your personal video recorder, from anywhere in the world as long as you have a broadband Internet connection.

How good is Sling Media at inventing technology? How "cool" is Slingbox? I don't know. I've never tried it or even seen a demonstration of it. But one thing I do know is that the company is very good at public relations. Technology journalists for both The New York Times and The Washington Post did stories on Slingbox that appeared in the March 23, 2006, editions of their respective publications. And they were both scooped by a story in the Technology Quarterly section of the March 9 edition of The Economist. It's not uncommon to see a wire service story appear in multiple papers, but none of these three articles credited a news wire, so I assume they were written independently.

Never having seen it, I can't comment on how well Slingbox does what it is promoted as doing, but I have a more basic question: Why do you need to be able to watch your home television from anywhere on the Internet? Heaven forbid you should miss the latest episode of American Idol or not find out right away who was the latest poor sap to be fired by the man with the big hair. This may be hard for you to believe right now, but your life is probably not going to end if you miss something on television.

It's not getting any better. I don't watch much television these days, but in one of my weaker moments, I did turn on the tube and saw an ad for a new show called Miracle Workers. I don't know if the program is on yet, nor can I be bothered to find out if it is, but what I understood from the promo is that some desperately ill people will get a chance to be cured by some of the top doctors in America in return for being part of the reality show that broadcasts the spectacle. So, basically, the way it works is this: If you triumph in some television producer's "real person with horrible condition" audition, you'll win the privilege of being treated by a medical hotshot who probably wouldn't give you the time of day otherwise, assuming of course you don't mind having your most private experiences broadcast to millions of people. Am I the only person who finds this to be a rather depraved way to run a medical system?

I have a suggestion that I really think one of the networks should jump on. Here's how a network can make its programs more exciting and stop wasting so much of our time: To choose the patient who will be treated on Miracle Workers or some rip-off of the program if a rival network decides to take up my suggestion, round up a dozen or so artistically talented people who are suffering horribly from dreadful, preferably life-threatening ailments. Bring them together and have them perform in a talent competition that is held in a hospital. At the end of each round, let the contestants themselves vote one of their group out of the hospital ward. The last one in the ward will get the lifesaving operation. Here's the exciting part. Instead of a topnotch medical professional, the first person to be fired on the latest season of The Apprentice does the operation. That way, the network can combine episodes of Survivor, American Idol, The Apprentice, Miracle Workers, and Fear Factor into a single program so we can get them over with all at once and go out for a beer. That's the kind of efficient television programming that might convince me to get a Slingbox. Nothing less will do it.

And another thing. Where are people going to be watching the programs that Slingbox is sending them? A couple of the articles mentioned that, with wireless broadband now being made available for handheld devices, such as cell phones, you'll be able to watch the Slingbox output on these devices. I've already written enough in past tirades about what I think of the prospect of watching a television program on a screen so small that a human face is not likely to be allocated more than a few pixels. And I don't need to mention how thrilled I'm going to be about having these things invade public spaces, so I won't mention it. Enough said. Well, maybe not enough; I should also point out that this sounds like an incredibly stupid idea to me.

If people aren't going to use Slingbox to send television to their puny handheld devices, where else might they watch the transmitted programs? Don't forget, you need a broadband Internet connection. Where other than their homes are people likely to have a computer at hand and ready access to broadband Internet? That's right, at work. Here's a little suggestion. I don't think your boss is going to be too thrilled if you spend your working hours watching your favorite soap operas or sporting events and, in the process, tie up a good portion of the company's network bandwidth in order to get the high-definition version of the programs down to your office PC. If you do that, your boss might decide to give you a lot more time to watch daytime television; however, you may find that you no longer have the income necessary to pay the cable or Internet charges.

Joel Klebanoff is a consultant, a writer, and president of Klebanoff Associates, Inc., a Toronto, Canada-based marketing communications firm. He is also the author of BYTE-ing Satire, a compilation of a year's worth of his columns. 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 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. He retains the copyrights to his writing and expects a royalty from the networks should they adopt his idea for a show. However, he's not holding his breath.

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.

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