Growing up on demand

Heard earlier today in a presentation, “My seven year old son gets terribly frustrated he can’t fast forward the TV.” Reminds me of Tapscott’s Growing up Digital from the 90s. Ooh, there’s now a sequel. Must take a look.

Written by Ian Fogg

November 18, 2008 at 9:08 pm

Posted in Content

Tagged with Kids

4 Responses

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I still find it bizarre that people actually watch TV when they can’t skip through the advertisements. (I’ve had access to video recording technologies since I was about 16.)

RogerBW

November 19, 2008 at 10:36 am

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Record the show and start watching five minutes late? That should be enough slack to skip the ad break.

SeanD

November 19, 2008 at 1:09 pm

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Not sure 5 minutes is enough time. You’re thinking that the main reason someone would want to skip forward are advert breaks. I don’t think that’s right.

I’m sure that the seven year old here wants to skip the dull parts of TV programmes, and dull entire programmes so as to watch the next one too, not just adverts. So, might need 15m of forwardable time, but equally might need an hour or more. Delayed recording isn’t really viable for these uses.

The only real way to deliver fully fast forwardable content is to avoid live broadcast entirely, and use a true on demand service, or record everything with a DVR like Tivo or Sky+.

I’m waiting to hear about the first kid that wants to forward through the dull parts of a live football match to get to the goals, or over live satellite news feeds…

Ian Fogg

November 19, 2008 at 5:57 pm

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If you can’t speed up reality, how about slowing down your own consciousness? Something could send you to sleep (or freeze you a la Futurama) during the dull bits.

Combine this with live recording, so the system can wake you up when something interesting happens and rewind a bit so you catch it all.

SeanD

November 20, 2008 at 11:39 am

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