Design Challenges

Is TiVo the end of advertisement?

I was watching the Apprentice recently and the task focus on teaching senior citizens folks about technology and how grand it is. One of the older gentlemen stated that technology came from the devil. This got me thinking about what he meant.

Did he mean that technology is difficult to use therefore no good force could have created. I can see his point to this. Not everyone is technologically savvy. Within owners of technology companies, you will find many who do not use a computer, know how to program a VCR, or better yet have never heard of TIVO or DVR technologies. So if this is within the technology industry, why should we expect the older generation who grew up without Television to know how to work today's modern gadgets, let alone appreciate them as most of us do?

I don't think technology is evil by any means; I think technology has let us to great scientific discoveries, but I also think that technology has made us lazy. How could we fight technology when it makes the smallest of tasks so much easier?

Without email or cell phones I would go weeks or perhaps month without communication with my parents who live overseas. No longer do we have to warm up the oven and wait for what seems like eternity for a meal, we can simply press a few buttons and have a hot meal at our disposal. With such conveniences, how can someone say that technology is evil, I'm sure this person is confuse as to what technology is or isn't.

However, the question of TIVO/DVR still remains, we can now not only fast forward through commercials, but we can pause "live" TV, and digitally record a multitude of shows that we like; and the device can record shows we haven't heard of based on our likes... Simply brilliant!

But with this technology, marketers must be shaking in their boots. On the one hand TIVO is great for the consumer, but how about businesses who promote their goods through this medium to have their campaigns unwatched as we fast forward through them. For a person like myself this have a double fold impact. I, on one hand dislike advertisement, I think we are targeted to death in every medium of communication available. But in the other, I'm a creative person who by fast forwarding through commercial is loosing out on seeing other creative people's work who can potentially inspire me to create great work.

The bottom line is that digital recording provides great features for the person who doesn't have a lot of time in their hands to spend watching endless commercials and yet wants to catch a TV program or two at their convenience. Technology has brought us great things and as a techie my vote is for better and faster equipment which will provide more comfort to us all. But that's my opinion and I'm bias on the subject.