Steve’s Kill Your Cable Adventure #6: Not With A Bang, But With A Spare $90

So I got around to finally Killing My Cable.

We haven’t been using cable in my apartment for awhile anyway, as our regular readers know.  First, my roommate and I experimented in going without, but kept it around.  Then I cancelled TiVO, and I just didn’t get to canceling cable until recently because I kept forgetting to.

It was pretty simple – I called the company, cancelled, and took the card into the local office to turn in.  That was that.  No more cable.  A strange denouement to something I’ve been using for nearly 30 years.

Yet, an understandable end to something that just isn’t what it was three decades ago, or even a decade ago.

Walking into the local cable company office, the cable card in my pocket, it struck me how archaic it felt.  People with bulky cable boxes being returned or picked up, the line to talk to staff who clearly didn’t want to be there, the advertisements for services that no longer seemed new or fresh.  I could feel the age of the idea of cable itself weighing the place down.

Even the card I carried plugged into a bulky TiVO box.  This small device itself was a reminder of the odd negotiations of years past to get things to work together.  It was an artifact of old battles (as opposed to some of the new battles and continuing ones).

Cable feels aged, out-of-date, arthritic.

The office wasn’t a Genius Bar.  The technology seemed inappropriately large and ungainly.  The staff attitude wasn’t enthusiastic.  The service . . . well the service is something you can get anywhere, namely bland and uninterested.

At home I’ve got Netflix and Hulu on my Xbox or computer, with slick recommendations and all the programming I want.  I’ve got glittering, light, fast, friendly devices to deliver my content (among other things).  I can get what I want, when I want it, in many ways.

The age of content delivery is fast, slick, sexy, and smart – and with many options.

Cable still has the moribund feel of something that remembers being the only option.  It reminds me a bit of Microsoft back before Microsoft caught on and knocked everyone’s sox off with the XBox.  Perhaps that should offer cable companies hope – and something to think of.

I don’t miss cable.  I think, perhaps, I miss when cable was cool, when a new channel was amazing, when you could dig up neat treasures surfing around.  Those times are gone, and now the internet and Netflix and everything else offers a world of possibility – and focus.

I also wonder if Cable companies can truly move with the times.

I do believe it’s possible. A smart cable provider could become a kind of “ISP plus,” with all sorts of extra bundled services, premium content, and so forth.  It’d be a shift, indeed.  It’d be less profitable (if probably more stable) than they’re used to I’m quite sure.  It’d require effort, it would require change.

Sadly, I’m not seeing the kind of radical change that’s needed coming out of cable, though at some point the writing on the wall will be a bright neon glow that can’t be ignored.  By that time, it may be to late.

So now, I’m cable-free.

It should feel like something big or revolutionary.

Instead, by now, I just feel like my roommate and I are saving $90 a month between cable and TiVo.  I’m pretty attached to the money, but it’s still not the same.

Steven Savage

Why We’re In The World Of Eternal Nerdstocks

So Wednesday we had the big Apple announcements.   New iPad!  Apple TV!  More Siri!  We learn what Voldemort’s plan is!

. . . er, wait a second.  Yeah, sorry, the last sentence was wrong.  See it only felt like some giant release of a big novel.

I’ve noticed lately that big technical announcements, especially ones relating to Apple, consumer electronics, and of course games, are huge events?  Have you noticed the social bonding as people wait for products and specs, then share them?  Have you fanned over gizmos and games and stats?

Well, if you’re reading this you probably have.  For all I know now you’re wishing Mass Effect 3 came on the new iPad so you could play it using Siri.  For all I know someone is doing it.

Technical announcements and events have become just like big book events and big movie events.  They’re big productions, important, everyone is there, and we line up around the block to get our stuff (even if it’s only a virtual block).  We bond over it, it provides *meaning* to us.  It provides social bonding and connection.

Nerdstock is every few months.

I can’t overstate the importance of this – we are now bonding over technology and tools.  Sure some of the technology is fun technology, but even then there’s a technical aspect to it (“What machine are you running ‘Mass Age 3: Effect of Dragons’ on?”*)  Our social interactions now have a strong component of “what tool is coming out next?”

Our social bonding has thus taken on a strangely practical quality in the geekosphere.  We’re analyzing what we can do and what we can achieve and what we can play on some new device.  Tegra chips and hi-res screens are things we talk about over dinner.  We walk the Apple store with our friends appreciating the lovely gadgets.  We make jokes about the Adobe building**, in contrast to their software.

It’s not just geeks either.  Google TV has my parents talking about the virtues of browsers-on televisions.  Tablets are discussed by education professionals.  Everyone has some kind of smart phone that does many things including let you direct unhinged avians at angry bacon sources.

We’re bonding over technology as sure as we would of a film or a book.  It’s getting even more prominent.

I actually think this is a good thing – as in many ways it’s practical and educational.  People learn.  People use the technology.  People do stuff (even, again, if it’s winged creatures versus walking pork).  It’s a celebration of stuff we do stuff with.

This may also be part of what I noticed is an increasingly progeny streak in younger people (which, as I head to 44, I should clarify means anyone under 27 to me).  They’re used to celebrating tech and using it, used to the amazing things coming out.  Also, they’re probably thinking more of the future since some of us kinda screwed it up for us.

I only see more Nerdstocks in the future.  I see people discussing where they were when SiriBot 6000 came out.  I expect to see people discussing how they fell in love at a Microsoft Event openly.

. . . I’m kind of all for this.

Steven Savage

* Dragons in space and sexytime with alien elves.  Tell me you wouldn’t play it.

** Really, that thing is ugly.

Media and the Future: What we bought wasn’t what was sold.

Hollywood's movie number aren't what they seem, SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA have support that is clueless if not malicious.  We're not happy as we decry lousy media, bad law, and bad faith. It seems that people are a might distressed with some media companies – even as we geeks want to work in or with media.

I've been speculating on this divide recently.  We're glad to pay for our media – most of us have a fundamental sense of fairness that goes into "Shut up and take my money" territory.  We're glad to work with media because we like it.  Yet, too many times, various media interests dodge, engage in subterfuge, or just outright try to turn government to their interest and away from ours.

Yes, this is stupid.  Yes there's greed, malice, and inertia, but I think there's a major factor being ignored here.  I think this factor is one reason Hollywood and the rest of Big Media are caught so flat-footed.

They sold us one thing, but we were buying another.

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