For my mid-term project, i decided to answer the question, "Is Television still apart of our everyday life?" For the purpose of this essay, I want to convince the viewer that television has moved away from a family/group experience to more of an individual viewing experience. When i was growing as a young child, watching television with my family was a way for me and family to bond and come together as a family to spend quality time together. After dinner, me and my brother would be spend hours watching the tube before beginning our homework and school projects. We had limited channels, so content was limited to what our basic TV package had to offer. My dad would read the paper, while the children would waste time, watching our favorite prime-time shows and after school specials. My friends and I, would watch popular television shows together and spend afternoons debating issues of the latest episodes. The Internet at the time was not popular, so watching T.V. was a way from everyone to come together to spend time together.
However, with the advent of smartphone technology and the Wolrd Wide Web, TV is now viewed on different media platforms. These platforms include watching Television on our blackberry's, Ipods and Ipads. Many would argue that watching television on mobile devices is an inconvenience because of the size of the screen. People on the way to work or school, will upload news programs to their cellular devices and watch the news and other entertainment programs to kill time before they arrive at their destination. Television is now on the go and the viewing experience is subjected to our pockets. I found a great article called "podracing", in which it argues that television content on smartphones has created a personal viewing experience, along with public transportation mobile content has created a feeling of being up to date with the latest news and events.
The Internet has now created isolationism because children and teenagers will go to their rooms and turn on their laptops and download television shows off websites that offer Divx movies. Divx movies allows for the streaming of live content. Families, instead of gathering in their living rooms to watch a program will turn on their computers in different parts of the house to watch content via the World Wide Web.
The only time that television is related to a group experience is when a major event is on national Tv such as the Superbowl, World Series, World Cup, in which people gather to throw parties to celebrate the event. However, even with the WORLD CUP, Rogers Communications, offered its customers live streaming through their computers of the soccer coverage. Will mobile tv and internet streaming create an isolated society or are we just more intimate with our viewing experience?
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