The Luddite experiment

Starting tomorrow, I'm off the computer for a week. It's my half of a little relationship experiment my fiance want to try: she's switching off the TV for the same week.

Now, I have no doubt that both of us will benefit from this seven-day reprieve from our time-killing technology of choice; we're both readers, and I suspect reading will rush in like clean air to fill the void left in our evening hours. There's also the distinct likelihood that we'll spend more time doing things together, as opposed to spending time in different rooms of the house.

But I admit it: I think she'll benefit more than I will. I've been convinced for some time of something she's been saying more and more of late: that TV no longer has any redeeming merit whatsoever.

I do not feel that way about being online. My evenings can involve a bit of reading, a bit of writing, some updates to my movie review website, a few games of chess, maybe a little World of Warcraft—and yes, the odd detour down the Web's darker and seedier byways. Far as I can tell, her television time usually involves rapid-fire flipping past such edifying programs as Reba, old reruns of The Nanny, and inexcusably censored movies. What's on most channels is either blatantly exploitative (see Intervention), or merely vapid. Or both (see Nancy Grace).

This is not an elitist statement. The same could just as easily be said about the Internet, from e-mail and newsgroups to websites and blogs. But there are two differences that make online media smarter.

The first difference is in the interactivity. It's not the form of online content that matters so much as the function of interactivity itself, the actively engaged pull rather than television's passive brain-dead push.

The second difference is that the smart stuff is always out there online. It takes some discernment to find it, and perhaps somewhat more to appreciate it, but it's there. Deciding to stop the dumbed-down madness demands only that you adjust your favourites list. When it comes to TV, however, the best option for those who want something more is to throw the damn box out the window and cancel the cable. Except for the high-speed Net access, that is.

It's probably too much to hope that our little experiment will prompt Trish to get rid of the TV in our living room. (Hell, I actually want that one to be bigger so we have a big screen to match the big sound for watching DVDs.) But I'm crossing my fingers that it will spell doom for the one in the bedroom.