"Die, TV!" - Universal remote silences public televisions

[JackRiddler]

Article in Counterpunch describes the wonderful product you can order here:
http://www.tvbgone.com/cfe_tvbg_main.php

February 1, 2007

Die, TV!
By CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM

http://counterpunch.org/ketcham02012007.html

(snip)

TV is unique in the EEG activity it summons in the human brain, and unique as well in that it drastically reduces the metabolic rate of the human organism. When you sleep, you use more energy than when you watch TV. When you stare at a painting or read a book or knit or fart in bed, you use more energy. EEG activity during television-watching is marked by alpha waves, those dreamy, spacey waves that also exist between sleeping and waking--a passive state in which sustained intense critical thought is pretty much impossible. Alpha waves are also associated with coma.

(Note: The above is one of the points I was trying to make in an earlier post saying Baby Einstein and Teletubbies were "evil" - not because of content, but because these are entraining infants who would otherwise have little interest to begin watching TV at ever-earlier ages. Most of the replies attacked me for being a fundamentalist fun-spoiler.)

The technology that Altman devised to counteract this horror was simple. The TV-B-Gone consists of a computer chip programmed with a database of all the power codes of televisions in existence that Altman could track down from the public domain. The diode eye uses infrared light, which makes it felicitous to zap through clothing or across window panes or from a distance.

(snip)

Mitch Altman, the 50-year-old inventor of the TV-B-Gone, tells me that when he feels depressed he arms himself and heads into the streets. "It's almost a compulsion for me. When I see a TV going in a public place, I go out of my way to turn it off," he says. "Imagine a room where there's an uptight person wearing really bright clothing and jumping up and down and yelling. It's hard to be relaxed when that person is present. When a TV goes off, I notice people's shoulders and arms relax--the body language changes completely. When I'm feeling blue, I turn off a television or two and life just seems a whole lot better."

(snip)

It wasn't just Gilligan's Island. It was the physical and psychological awfulness of the experience of watching television. It was the fact that Altman one day sat down in a restaurant with old friends he hadn't seen in years, "but there was a television playing nearby and we found ourselves watching the TV--unable not to watch the television--instead of talking to each other, being with each other."

(author reports experiences in shutting down TVs around the world, including on Super Bowl Sunday...)

http://counterpunch.org/ketcham02012007.html