Angela Carley
Media and Culture Week 5

With Honeycrisp technology, the television will know when you are getting ready for work and will give you the traffic report and weather. It can also differentiate when you are getting ready for a class or another activity and give you appropriate programming to suit your mood or information requirement.
Now, when you are watching that thriller you’ve been waiting all week to see, and the plot begins to thicken and your adrenaline starts flowing, your programming will already have sensed that you are getting too excited. Alternative endings to the movie are set according to how well your body responded to the stress of the action scenes.
Let’s say you are up late, watching a movie, and your child comes down for a drink of water, with this technology, the child’s presence would be detected and automatically pause your programming, avoiding any inappropriate viewing.
You can program the level of violence and language appropriate for each of your children in their television shows, games and music.
Each person has their own individualized programming, but the system can be set to pick up multiple viewers too. By reading the vital signs of all the people in the room the Honeycrisp system can find the most appropriate media for all.
But given all this individualized attention, I imagine watching media with others will become a thing of the past. Everyone will have their own pocket device which does everything from take care of your banking to monitoring your hunger level. It can also recommend the nutrients most needed for optimal performance.
I imagine television programs will be much different, given this kind of technology. Our media will be more interactive and able to shift and change at any given moment. Shows will become personalized, and even speak to the listener by name. Imagine a morning talk show where they ask your opinion. Or a cooking show based solely on what ingredients you have to cook with.
If you are feeling depressed, your morning hosts are there to cheer you up and talk about things related to what you are feeling. If it persists, you will be directed to the proper pharmaceuticals to correct the imbalance.
I can’t say this would be a good thing. In my opinion, the “powers that be’ are all too comfortable having us live in a constant state of fear, anxiety and longing. This kind of technology would make tv and the internet all the more addictive. If my television knew what I liked to watch, I would be hard pressed to get anything done in a day, because the next program would always be a great one.
I can see how this would have its advantages. It certainly would be convenient to have such a smart television, but I tend to think we are losing our ability to think for ourselves because of such advancements in technology.
A world were most are comfortable being told what to do and how to feel, is not one I am comfortable with.