So Much Media, So Little Time

The Dowbrigade is old enough to remember
when we had more time than media. Long hot summer afternoons when we
ran out of the paperback Ace and Tor science fiction novels we borrowed by the armload
from Mother’s mysterious friend Betty Mae, nights after curfew with
a flashlight under covers sick of rereading the same Dr. Strange and
Green Lantern and Magnus Robot Hunter issues, long weird nights in our
dorm in the Yard, wired and twisted, listening to the national anthem
following the late show on the last TV station to sign off, six long
empty hours til dawn. VCR’s, Cable TV and personal computers were years
from being invented, and physical media like books, comics and LPs were
expensive for a kid.

How times have changed! Gainful employment and the
internet opened access to far more types and numbers of media than we
had even
imagined existed during our formative years. We first realized during
the original Napster gold rush that one could download media at a much
higher rate than you could consume it, leading to media glut. Bit torrent, podcasting, video blogging and collection nets, together with huge, cheap hard drives, only exacerbated the problem.

Our apartment and our office are piled high with unread
or annotated newspapers, magazines and academic journals. There are overflowing
bookcases in every room, with books stacked two high and two deep on
most shelves, and horizontal piles on top. There are racks, piles and stacks of CDs and
DVDs, drawers full of VCR tapes, and hard drives internal and external,
with and without computers, on all surfaces.

And in addition, almost to our chagrin, we find ourselves
with a "real" life that we rather like – a job we enjoy, a lovely and
lively wife, plenty of free time to exercise and play games. On
nice days, we can’t bring ourselves to sit in front of a screen anymore.
We finally have a surfeit of fantastic media, and a deficit of idle hours
to enjoy them.

Plus, like Zippy, we just can’t stay awake for three
or four days at a stretch like we used to, back in the day. Nowadays,
we have trouble making it to the end of the 11 pm news. It took us three
days to watch Da Vinci Code cuz we wouldn’t fire it up til Norma went
to sleep, and soon we were getting verrrry sleeepppyyy. And now the World Cup is wreaking havoc
with our nap schedule.

Of course, even today there are people in the world who have more time than media. Pockets of poverty throughout the developed world and oceans of humanity in Asia. Practically the entire continent of Africa. People incarcerated, hospitalized, militarized or otherwise institutionalized. Entire families who voluntarily eschew modern media as uncouth, unaestetic or corrupt. Of them, we can only say, may God have mercy on their souls. We are sure they feel the same way about us.

It is both a blessing and a curse to live in times so
interesting, and to be so easily amused…