iguanamountain blog

January 6 - NP BLOG (PROMPTLESS!)

Today's prompt is outside my experience of the American and British media world, which is centered around television programs.

As I've written before, I do not have television on the sailboat, and have not really watched television since I left Iran (one & a half years ago). And that was not a lot of Western TV.

Connection here is by Internet, and that is limited by bandwidth, which means even YouTube often has a difficult time loading. Like two seconds of video requires one minute of the maddening 'loading' signal.

I'm not complaining. Been without it for long enough to not miss it. It is just the way it is. Of course satellite cable television is here and available for a price, if there is a cable installed.

I have friends who have big screen and some program is always on. However, I'm aware that they rarely watch or listen. They talk over the programs all the time. A group of friends have a loud, lively conversation with an unnoticed background of loud movies, news, sports, etc. I'm always trying to split my concentration to see what's going on the TV. It was the same in Tehran. No one ever paid any attention.

The opposite is the personal attention given to their phones, and this behavior seems to be universal. Conversation comes to a dead stop when a new text or social network contact call arrives. Total priority is given to the phone no matter where they are or what they were doing.  Go figure.

On the positive side, it does require a mind to be active, not passive. I see very small children, a little over one-year old, able to manuver a phone touch screen. And as they grow, they do have to learn how to type and spell to get a correct response from a computer. I wonder if they will ever learn how to hand write and print? Or is that destined to be an artistic skill?

I guess the idea to to adapt...>>>iggy

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