Please Make the Television More Like the Computer

I am a creature of habit. Once I develop habits, they stick with me for a long time. And nothing today is more habitual than the computer and the Internet. I find that certain habits that I’ve picked up through modern technology I want to use elsewhere, but they don’t exist.

For instance, online searching. When I sit down to my television set, I generally will flip through the channels until I find something I want to watch. Most people would go to the directory channel provided by their cable or satellite company and sit there while they read screen after screen of program names and times. That’s not for me. Still others may pick up the good old fashioned TV Guide. I haven’t owned or purchased a TV Guide probably since the 1980s.

But I have a solution, and I task any young entrepreneurial spirit to develop it. I would like to be able to sit down at my television, click a button on my remote and have a search box pop up. I would just type into the search box the name of the show I’m looking for, hit enter and bam! The television finds it and there it is. If, for example, I wanted to hear the latest dish about Madonna, I could — just like the Internet — type in “Madonna”, and all the Madonna songs, Madonna gossip or Madonna interviews would pop up on my screen for my review.

The other thing that drives me nuts are the forward and back buttons. They work just fine on the Internet, but get into a Microsoft Word doc or Excel spreadsheet and try to find the back button and it “ain’t there”. I’m still using Office 2003, and perhaps good ol’ Bill has already figured this out and its in Office 2007. But in the meantime, I find myself nonchalently seeking out that back button out of habit.

Someday, I believe everything on television will be served by the Internet and everything on the computer will work just like the Internet. It can’t come soon enough for me.

Please check out my novel, In Fashion's Web on Amazon.