You cannot have watched TV in the last few months and not be aware that a type of doomsday is forecast for February, 2009 when the United States will make the exciting transition from Analog Television (listen to it, it already sounds archaic) to Digital Television. The scrolling marquee across the top of our beloved TV shows distracts us and makes us wonder - are we ready? Did we buy the box? Do we already have digital - do we need anything else? HDTV.GOV even has an official second by second countdown. The world will be changing. Will you be left behind? We are going officially digital and anyone who is unprepared will...will...well what would happen to me if I didn't join the crowd in February 2009?
What would happen if I let my subscription to addictive, unhelpful, misguided, superficial, and often mind-withering television programs expire? What would happen to me if I just didn't catch the digital fever? What would happen to my soul if I chose a different road? May I speculate? Perhaps my soul will awake from it's comatose digression within reality TV and find, thank God, that I am actually still alive and that it has been about six years since I tried swing dancing, or two years since I spent the evening on the back porch smoking a pipe, three months since I last played wiffle ball, since high school that I read a book (well, no, I didn't read any books in high school), and that I have never even so much as knocked on my neighbors door to introduce myself.
None of these experiences are digital and so I can't imagine that a transition to an all-digital age will do anything more for my soul than would a transition away from it. In fact, the latter option I believe would point me towards soul fulfilling options in my life.
I am not anti-TV or anti-technology or, for that matter, anti-the digital transition in 2009. That would not be my point. I merely suggest that the option is on the table to totally ignore the panic that our TVs won't be working or that we won't be linked into the digital world, and to totally ignore the idea that somehow we will lose ourselves if we did not upgrade immediately, before its too late. I, for one, would like to try a month, or two, or seventeen, without digital cable, and see what happens to my soul.
Again, I would not be one to de-value technology - technology makes you able to read these words. What I would simply like to do in February 2009 is re-value our souls and reestablish the very real idea that human beings have flourished in non-digital ages. Our souls can equally flourish in the Digital Age - but it won't happen on the couch. It won't happen if the best part of our family lives is spent watching digital television surrounded by the loved ones that we haven't loved in quite some time.
In the least we must ask ourselves the question of whether digital television is making us more human or if it is making more humans less so. The answer to that may help us decide what to do in February 2009.
I for one will try wiffle ball, or fishing, or visiting an old church, or growing garlic, or....
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