The new normal
I'm a huge fan of the sitcom Taxi. One of my favorite episodes featured Danny DeVito's Louie De Palma character attempting to land the apartment of his dreams. At one point he says to buddy Alex "Ohhhh, a microwave oven! I heard that if you stand too close to these things they can make you sterile."
Unable to contain his child-like giddiness, the next shot shows Louie leaping up on to the counter and fitting his 5'1" frame around this fascinating piece of technology.
That is the best way I can sum up how excited I am about all the consumer technology advances I've introduced into my life in the past 12 months and how they've made me sometimes question where I really live. Another plus is I don't have to worry about possible negative health effects.
The digital additions to my family included DirecTV with TiVo, XM Radio, a new digital camera and the most recent, a TV tuner which I had installed into my PC.
It all started with a move that greatly increased my commute to work (on those days I'm not telecommuting). XM Radio almost instantly went from something that would be nice to have to something that I can't see me driving more than 20 minutes without for as long as I live. It's amazing how little you can miss something you used to have fully integrated into your life when the alternative unquestionably superior. (Are you listening Clear Channel and Infinity?)
I somewhat frequently drive to the Boston area to visit my in-laws. It's a pretty strange feeling the first time you make a long drive and are able to listen to the same radio station the entire way. That feeling quickly fades, but it doesn't ever feel old, it simply feels like that's the way it should have been all along.
My next acquisition, DirecTV, only came about because my cable company told me no. Adelphia, a company that's been in bankruptcy for a while now, was unable to accommodate my request to buy Major League Baseball's wonderful Extra Innings package. I say this with a straight face when I tell you that this was a purchase for my wife, a die-hard Red Sox fan, who feels a little farther from her birth place when spring and summer roll around.
After learning that my balcony faces the southern sky and not injuring myself after pulling a De Palma-esque leap, we quickly became what might be described as NESN-aholics. We watched roughly 85 percent of all the Red Sox games, and as you may have heard, could not have picked a better season to do so. Ironically, we seemed to miss the most Red Sox games when we were actually in Boston. In a sense, DirecTV helped make my current hometown of Frederick, Md. feel like a suburb of Boston.
The digital camera was huge during a trip to Ireland over Thanksgiving. Going digital enabled us to send some pix home in seconds and helped us feel a little closer to family with which we'd normally be sharing a holiday meal.
A short time later, the TV Tuner was installed, and it took me about four days before I stopped babbling to my wife about how great this tool is and how many ways I'm going to be able to use it to capture and manipulate video for both personal and professional use. Simply put, Imagine combining TiVo with a video editor that can also generate complete HTML pages with closed caption text and screen shots from television shows. I felt about the same way I did when I first blew off studying for mid-term exam because I had discovered the joy of surfing the Web.
This whirlwind of giddiness and gigabytes will come full circle when we capture NESN's re-broadcasts of the 2004 ALCS and World Series and turn them into our own DVDs.
That should keep us busy until spring training. Which, by the way, will be broadcast in its entirety along with the regular season on XM radio.
The bottom line is this is the new normal. I live everywhere and nowhere. I feel entitled to own any media I encounter. And I'm not alone. Most of you reading this are not surprised by anything I've just described. The big question now is when everyone holds these notions to be self-evident, what effect will that have on the media?
With your help, that's what we're trying to figure out at the Media Center.