I highly recommend watching this documentary if you have a Netflix account. The whole show was very effective and moving. Human beings on Planet Earth are ultimately doomed unless we change our behaviors as a species. According to the documentary, it may still be possible to change course.
This documentary addresses a few of the factors that define the health of Planet Earth, and talks about “tipping points” when it comes to the state all of these factors.
The dramatic headline “The FCC is going to war over set-top boxes” brought back memories of the time I was dealing with regulatory issues in the world of entertainment. I think some things will never change as long as there is big money involved and there exists the institution of lobbying. The battle to change the existing paradigm regarding processing and delivery of entertainment content to consumer eyes from signals that are delivered to the home by the cable companies, and to a certain extent satellite TV companies, has been ongoing for years. It is the traditional television content delivery guys trying to protect their turf against the home entertainment guys who want to expand the reach of their systems and control how the consumers interface with the cable TV guy’s signals. If you think that the opposition to the current cable TV signal handling paradigm in the home comes from organizations that are trying to protect the consumer and have their goodwill at heart, think again. It is companies like Google and Sony who are on the other side, with their own business interests at heart.
It is all about business and money at the end of the day. And I have to throw up my hands and laugh at the absurdity of all of it, because all of this fuss, and the use of significant monetary resources, is about entertainment and the distraction of the population, something far removed from the more basic needs of the people at large. While reading the article above I came upon this video from John Oliver from a long while back on the topic of Net Neutrality. It is dated at this point but still hilarious!
There is another battle well underway in parallel in the entertainment world where the forces of business are trying to change the way entertainment actually gets into your home. Companies like Netflix and Amazon actually deliver entertainment content via the Internet, which is of course a very non-traditional approach to doing things. Considering that the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are almost always the cable companies themselves, this leads to the development of interesting business strategies by the cable companies to try to optimize return to their shareholders, all of which is supported by suitable lobbying of the government that is hoped to result in regulatory regimes that benefit one company or the other.
For heaven’s sake, it is only entertainment!
Splattered Brains 