They won't work next year, so recycle 'em, and look to other sources of news.
April 4, 2008
1968: The Start of the Technological Revolution: When did the tech revolution really start?
Affordable Rural Broadband: Some high speed access is out in the country, but it's expensive.
All Hand Coded: I enjoy coding things myself despite all the extra work it creates.
Am I Old Fashioned? Thoughts on Change: Andrew writes about his thoughts on a changing world.
As A Computer Programmer: One of a series of essays on different carrer options and what they entail.
Bureaucracies Have Political Cultures: Despite the image of apolitical life in bureaucracy, the people who make government work are often very political.
Bureaucracy: It's Problems: The reality of bureaucratic thought in our society.
Canned Reality: A discussion of video games, and television, and their effects on society.
Criticizing Technological Rationality: A careful analyisis of role of technology and bureaucratic rationality on the world around us.
Email and Spam: Many of us just get too much useless information but at least we don't have to dispose of it.
Highly Urbanized Computing: How Windows XP is not unlike our big cities.
Hudson Valley Not Tech Valley: Our future is in diversity, not technology.
In a Computerized World: Are We Humans Anymore?: Andrew asks if in a computer dominated world, if being a person means anything anymore.
Malta's Reality: Far from being a great tech center, it shows the freedom of rural life.
Nation of Managers: Management is not a solution to our problems.
Post-Modernity: Five areas of study that allow us to see beyond the limits of science and technology.
Running out of Freedom: It sometimes seems like that I've seen everything locally (eventhough I haven't), and that finding cgreener pastures is getting harder.
Simplicity: For the Web, For the World: Simple webpages present information quickly. A simple world makes sure we get that infomation.
Tech Valley Realities: High Tech in Albany won't just give us jobs, it will also change cultures and increase sprawl.
The Endless Freedom Assault of our Technocratic Society: How somehow our fixes to our problems may actually make things worst.
The Parthenon: Technology and Politics: Reviewing the relationship between technology, politics, and a greater society.
The Story of the Non-Programmer: Sometimes thinking about who you have been, can take the stress off a rough day, and the bad memories that a class may bring back.
Tired of Computers? I Don't Think I'm Alone.: After a long semister of dealing with them, and doing lots of school work, he's just plain tired...
Webpages: Keep 'em Simple: We need to have simple webpages that load quickly.
Wireless Internet: Free hotspots make it possible for us to access high speed internet without cost.
Next year the Federal Communications Commission will be making the television spectrum go dark after nearly 60 years of allowing companies to broadcast programming over the wireless spectrum. That means your existing television set won't work if you get stations over the air and don't have a cable or satellite connection.
They like to advertise on television that if you are willing to pony up between $40 and $75 dollars, you can get a special adapter box that will make your existing set compatible with this more high-tech way of broadcasting pictures. Not that it will improve your picture quality at all, but it will make the Chinese firms that make electronics richer.
Of course, in most cases it's just cheaper and sensible to buy a new television set, thanks to cheap imports of electronics that devalue precious metals and human nature. Many of the newer television have digital-compatible tuners, and have better picture tubes and LCD screens. Many of the previous generation television sets where cheaply made and are bound to fail from mechanical problems soon anyways.
There is little question what government and industry wants you to do with your old television set. They want you to go out and replace it with a new one, so to put more money in their pockets. Government gets tax revenue, businesses get your money. It's good for the economy, as they say.
But do you have to go out and buy a new television set or a fancy converter box?
Of course not. There is a much simpler solution: simply give up watching television. Our modern television sets are bad for our society innumerable ways. They consume a significant amount of electricity, they are made of toxics, teach consumerism, devalue our individualism, and make us fat. But there is an alternative.
It's that simple. There is nothing that says you need a television. I own a television nor do I have Internet at my apartment. It's one less expense that I have to pay, and I'm just as happy to boot without it. No stupid programming to watch, no time to waste looking at silly content that doesn't really matter much one way or another.
I own a small compact radio that I can get the news on and other interesting programing. National Public Radio and it's local affiliate WAMC has almost everything I'd ever want to know about what is going on locally. If I want more information, I go to the library with my laptop, and pull it off the wireless network. I can choose only the information I want without unnecessary commercials.
A television free-life is not a bad one. It allows you many more opportunities to explore other pursuits, and does not require hours of your undivided attention to the latest in the cultural spectacle. You don't have to make the Chinese any richer or make the environment any dirtier, by when retiring your old non-digital television, by choosing to give up television.
Most of us big boys would think it would be fun to sit the old analog television on a tree stump out back, run a lead cord out to it, turn it on, and shoot the hell out of it with a bb gun and watch the sparks fly at as the cathode ray tube is smashed. Or just clobber the hell out of the old television with rocks, then poor kerosene over it and watch it burn. (insert yehaw!)
That's not a good solution for disposing of old televisions. They contain a significant amount of lead and other toxins used make a television work. Those chemicals, while hazardous to the environment in high quantities, like when 400 million television get smashed into landfills, can be extracted and recycled into secondary uses, which slows the toxic-extraction of the material from the ground, and reduces the total amount of material that will eventually end up in landfills.
Hopefully, more municipalities will see the importance of used television and electronic recycling, and to make up for the upcoming conversion develop plans to take this old equipment, get as much value as possible out of them, and dispose of the rest with minimal environmental harm. It's too bad that they couldn't have just kept analog stations over the air, but it's an excuse to get rid of your television.
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