For the purposes of this piece of fodder, I am using the word canned in the sense of a 'canned shoot', the pejorative word used to describe so-called hunting preserves, where one pays big bucks to hunt in an enclosed area (of 10 acres or greater in New York). It's called canned shooting, as it takes place inside a closed area (a 'can'), and it's kind of a trashy whimpy thing to do (some say it should be 'canned').

On Phantasy

Is phantasy a bad thing? Yes, and no, depending on the form that it takes place in. Phantasy is natural and healthy part of being an adult, if engages a person's imagination and spawns new creativity. Such phantasy is grounded in reality, and while it may be absurd and maybe even dangerous to act out in reality, it is not based on artificial reality.

Inevitably, everything you make your world out to be is generated through the symbols you experience. Symbols can be physical objects, speech, the media, and probably anything else you can 'experience'.

On the other hand, we have canned reality and another form of phantasy generated, one made up in the world of another's head, and modified by another individual. As it's not based on a single person's reality, it is a quite dangerous thing—witness the supposed string of car thefts after the movie "Gone in 60 Seconds" came out, the probably untrue suggestion that Columbine kids got their ideas from video games, and so forth.

But even if canned phantasy does not prelude crime or terrorism, it certainly diminishes our most important resource: creativity. As I like to say, the only limited resource in the world is human creativity.

I will now consider several forms of canned reality and what they mean on society: (video) games, television, the Internet, and radio.

(Video) Games

It seems like everybody young likes to play video games. Honestly, I played them a few times, but I could never get much interest in them, if only because they seemed pretty useless and necessitating totally useless skills in reality. Admitly, Midtown Madness looks like a lot of fun, but challenging, especially to a neophyte like me. You have to understand that I grew up in a household without video games, and while I've occasionally played computer games, they've at best been a passing interest, and not one that I regularly do.

So what's there not to like about video games? They're fun, right? I can't seem to get myself into them (like most forms of canned entertainment). They just seem so pointless, they don't make you think, they are about behavior and not action.

They give you a phantasy to interact with, they give experience without context grounded in reality. Somehow I just see this technology blurring the lines between symbolic interaction of reality and that of another's fantasy. And does that lead to a projection on reality?

More importantly though, is that video games don't make you think, at least not in ways related to reality. Phantasy outside of the realm of video games, at least often reflects reality. Shooting people, and racing cars in video games do not. Racing a stock car or going hunting, are much different, much more spiritually attuned, much more grounded in reality. To some 'suburban' households (used in the pejorative sense), video games and computer games, replace all other activity for recreation and pleasure, especially thought provoking ones such as reading or writing.

Television

My parents bought a television when they were first married in 1972. Before then, neither parent owned a television, most of the TV that they saw was seen in passing. It was a smallish 19' black and white TV, it did everything they needed. Remember, that by the mid-1960, color TV was pretty common, so it was pretty behind the times.

I'm kind of a cynic when it comes to TV, I don't think I'd even bother to own one when I move outside of my parent's house. TV seems like a very inefficient way to get information, when you can get it almost instantly online. Yet, TV has some virtues, like being able to transmit moving pictures, something currently impossible to do over a modem connection on the Internet, at least with the same quality. Somethings just need more then a printed word to convey.

Not to sound fundamentally dishonest though, I watch TV quite often, sometimes for over an hour a night. It starts with ABC World News Tonight (a pretty good program 80% of the time), and then followed by some canned entertainment, namely Law and Order on TNT (yes, my parents finally got cable). I think cable is a total waste of money, and I don't think we are getting much value out of it at all—but I'm not even going to bother to fight it with my parents. Of course, for many people living in a world of canned reality, the idea of watching only a short period of TV a day, or none at all, is pretty chocking.

That said, I guess I'm not the only intellectual who has contempt for television. You listen to VoxPop on WAMC, and quite often callers will admit to being TV less, and I talking to a Capitol insider (the fancy word for lobbyist) who mentioned he didn't have cable, but at least had a TV and used it every few months.

When does TV become an addiction, and when does it's canned reality start having an effect on you, the individual? Imagination becomes a rarity, with events being symbolized by characters and actor's physical appearances, and not their reality. Words are vastly superior to television, insofar as they don't project a potentially false stereotype that scares you away.

The Internet

The Internet is an interesting issue when thinking about canned reality. There is much to the internet, beyond mass-society that is thought-provoking. At the same time, the Internet can be incredibly addictive and mind-numbing. In particular, computer games and internet games, seemingly replace the video game, providing more 'canned' reality.

There are several strengths to the Internet:

• Random Access
• Highly Textual, Less Pictures
• Large Variety of Material
• Possibility of Interaction

All of those things promote something beyond 'canned' society. People are able to go to a variety of sites and learn about any number of things, but at the same time, do not have to spend a half hour or and hour, just waiting for the part that they are interested into.

Textual based pages present facts and opinions, but allow the imagination to fill in many of the details and leave area for one to question. There is much material to interact with, so your not left with mind numbing stuff to watch, as with the limited TV channels.

One last strength is important: the ability of interaction. People can discuss issues with others, in a semi-anonymous form, in many excellent channels on IRC. Yes, some channels are crap, with much spam, but at the same time, there are many targeted channels with scholarly political and technological discussions.

Radio

I like listening to the radio. I love listening to music, while I work, drive, write, and dream. Music can be inspirational, as it often has latent to explicit political or social messages. Talk radio not only informs, it provokes thought and discussion on the part of the individual. I just remember hearing about 9-11 first on the car radio—the impassioned speakers, the fear, the reality of the attack. Certainly, it was different when seen on television, and those images will forever haunt me, but not to the extent of the first and foremost radio program. I used to listen to several of WRPIÕs most radical programs, but now I'm more of a WAMC bug.

Some radio programs like Car Talk are pretty devoid of anything useful, at least in the domain of political thinking. But they do entertain, and they can be enjoyed, without the kind of unilateral focus that television provokes. Prairie Home Companion and to a lesser extent Car Talk certainly do have purposes beyond entertainment, but at best, they are latent critiques of our world around us. It's all a matter of how close you listen.

The radio is something that is conservative enough in our world, that can exist almost anywhere we exist. Radios are small, and their reproduction of music or story does not necessarily interfere with our ability to act. It doesn't dominate our world like television or the video games.

Beyond Canned Reality

Is there hope, beyond that provided by mass media, for ourselves and our children? Maybe. Fighting against the age„of socialization that promote mass-society in our schools is a difficult task. Likewise, changing our behavior, so it becomes less centered around the behavior that promotes 'canned' society is difficult—do you want to replace your TV with a good AM/FM radio?

Certainly the first solution to this problem, is the same as most: recognizing that our societal dependence on 'canned' reality is a problem. We are starting to become what we see, or at least are too influenced by it. We should replace our desire to experience (on television, etc.) with our desire to act.

Another solution is to encourage people to be more active, and participate in more outdoor activities. Get the kids involved doing such things. Replace the notion of canned entertainment such as TV with hiking, biking, swimming, and so forth. Be real, not fake.

Encourage thinking and writing. It's nice to enjoy things, to experience things to artificial reality, but such things do little good. Canned reality does little to further society, but writing and 'publicly' thinking certainly does. An active citizen, has much that he can offer to society.

In the end, canned reality is not a desirable thing for our society to go towards. In the end, I believe there is hope beyond living the world of our television, video games, and so forth. Turn off the television, and go outdoors, as they say. Or replace a game with a writing pad.