I think that I may finally be living in the future

[nmg]

I've just followed the landing of a spacecraft on another planet from the comfort of my armchair.

Comments

[pinguthegreek.livejournal.com]

I suspect we will be the last generation to think of tv, phones and computers as separate devices. Your boys will take this stuff for granted.

[tlrmx.org (from livejournal.com)]

Personally I've been more impressed by the nature of the BBC's online Olympics coverage. Every event, live or at your pleasure afterwards, annotated and linked. That really feels like the future. Instead of being bored by pundits wittering on while things get set up I can click around to see /my/ highlights, the moments I care about, the events and people I'm interested in. I watched about a dozen events over the weekend, some of them would probably have been on the TV anyway (though surrounded by tedious punditry) but others would not. I doubt many people care about 50m pistol shooting (no Team GB) for example but the coverage was there for me nonetheless.

This approach stays relevant even if the next Games is half way around the world with major events taking place while Britain sleeps. It's a hard sell in place where the Olympic broadcaster is advertising funded, but I suspect that will just lead to pressure to find an alternate broadcaster in such places. NBC made a commercially sensible decision pushing key things into evening slots to maximise advertising revenue and restrict many services to paying subscribers, but the IOC doesn't see any money from those advertisers or subscribers, it just wants to maximise eyeballs and to increase interest in the minority sports to protect the Olympics and guarantee good bids for the next Games (people love the hundred metres, but they wouldn't spend billions of dollars for those ten seconds alone).

[jorune.livejournal.com]

It is an extraordinary notion. I can just picture a young boy in the past telling his parents that this would happen. They look at him with a 'not in my lifetime' look.