Get your own Free Home PageThe year 2009 will hold many surprises for us, one of them being a whole new outlook on television. Television is a common hobby for students today, so imagine how common that interest will be in 10 years. With the advances being made in the production of TV shows and the new products that companies are coming out with like digital video disk (DVD) and the flat-against-the-wall TV, expect the future to find TV doing more than making us laugh and cry. It will become a multi-purpose information center.
Students will use TV to do research on Web TV and most students won’t even have to go to school; they will be taught at home through interactive televisions. And it won’t stop there. People will use their televisions to make phone calls, faxes, to see their friends and family and even to shop. Every modern convenience that a computer performs will be on a television screen. The merging of computers and TVs is near now. For instance, the merger of Yahoo and Broadcast.com will have us watching video on computers via the Internet in two years.
Have you ever seen the movie "Back To The Future Part II ?" The one where they go to the future and see themselves older. Remember that one scene in that movie where Marty Sr. is making phone calls using his wide screen television that was flat against the wall, like a movie screen. That screen also had precious works of art on its screen and Marty Jr. was able to watch many channels at one time. That is where TV technology will take us. Maybe further.
As for the shows that our future alumni will watch, I think that broadcasting companies are increasingly heading toward teen drama shows like "Dawson’s Creek" and "Felicity." I see no reason that this trend will not continue. Although those particular shows will probably not be around in 2009, new, equally enthralling teen drama will take their place. However, these shows will have the same doses of sex and violence, if not more. The things that networks let slide on today’s programs used to constitute an R-rated movie. At this point, even with the new ratings system, the levels of sex and violence will only rise.
There will also be more animation. With the new Fox show "Futurama" and shows like "The PJs" and "The Simpsons" already finding sizable audiences, viewers will start to recognize how far we really have come in our technology. We can computerize cartoons enough to put out a new episode each week. Imagine what we could do with that in 10 years.
But what will be retro in 10 years? Nick at Nite and TV Land currently play reruns of shows like "Bewitched," "All In The Family," "My Three Sons" and "Happy Days." Will they instead play reruns of "Home Improvement," "Ellen," "Seinfeld," "The Cosby Show" and "South Park"? You Bet.
It is mind boggling to think that technology will allow us to watch TV, talk on the phone (probably a video phone and probably to more than one person) and do homework using computerized notepads all at the same time. However, the convenience of these machines may be accompanied by an unwanted side effect, the dumbing down of students, who will become even lazier. They won’t care about school at all since technology will do so much of the work. A faster, more comfortable society is not necessarily better.
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