Internet vs. TV

My senior of college we paid a small fortune every month to have an ISDN line hooked up to the house. That ISDN was then run through a crappy old “Hey I’m a router now” computer to allow four different workstation computers access the Internet, such as it was back then.

Oh yeah, it was a fly setup.

Well, more fly than sharing a modem connection, less fly than cable modems and DSL which didn’t exist in our city yet, and a whole lot less fly than a bank-breaking T1 would have been.

We also had a cable TV hook up for two televisions, one in the downstairs living room and one in the fireplace of the upstairs computer room. I realize that a TV in a fireplace probably isn’t exactly Feng Shui but it did sit in the focal point of the room and bring together the post-apocalyptic technology theme nicely.

Anyhow, I bring this up because the other day at home I was sitting on the couch with one notebook computer while my wife was sitting at the desk with another. Both of us were connected to the Airport and were browsing away when I noticed we hadn’t bothered turning on the TV after the kid went to bed. Thinking back to the days when giving up TV would see impossible (I mean, what else is supposed to go in a fireplace) I had this conversation:

Me: Which would you rather give up, TV or the Internet connection.

Her: TV.

Me: That was a quick answer.

Her: That wasn’t exactly the most challenging question in the world.

Back in the proverbial day trading TV for Internet would have been just crazy talk. I shudder to think what would have happened to the parties that we threw, we would have essentially been hanging a Chateau de Geek sign on the front porch. But today with entertainment like available at your fingertips like this:

Or this:

What Really Happened At The X-Wing Launch - Watch more free videos

…who needs TV?

Yes my geek sign is being built right now, but at least it will remote controllable via a web interface. Oh wait, that doesn’t make it any better does it…