Digital Television and Creative Thinking Skills

"Volunteers are needed to provide digital television for all. People without digital television will be left out of society", announced by TV companies and national broadcasting companies.

Incredible! One of the largest voluntary movement is taking place in Europe. Volunteers are sought to install digital TV for those that do not have it yet.

Why is there no such activity to provide support for elderly people in their daily activities? Why aren't there large volunteers programs to help handicapped people? Why is the digital television so special and important? Is it an instrument of control and entertainment at the same time? Would those people, old or young, be more active, creative and in better shape without television?

Some research results about creativity and TV watching:

- Television watching and radio listening did not improve creativity according to Mark Runko and Kathy Pezdek.

- The skill of producing novel responses was better in a group listening to radio than  in a group watching a television.

- What people watch on TV has a meaning. "Children watching dramatic shows increased in creative performance, while those watching cartoons and, surprisingly, educational programs had depressed creative scores. ":

- According to Christina Ting Fong, Emotionally engaging tasks and work has a positive effect on creativity, This one is not related to TV but explains emotional factors.

- Consumer 2.0 needs user-created content. User input can be an essential feature of a supplied service also in the sphere of (TV) consumption. (Thanks Mika (Pantzar) for advancing my understanding about customer behaviour.

- [Addition] Digital Television: What, why and how. Thanks Pertti (Näränen) and David (Traub) for providing me insights about Digi-TV. As you can see I may have misinterpreted information ;-)

Some humour stuff :

- William H. Deitz: "The easiest way to reduce inactivity is to turn off the TV set. Almost anything else uses more energy than watching TV." An old study, still relevant. 

- 10 Steps to Boost Your Creativity, check the item number 7 ;-)

- "Digital television s...."

Afterword: I do watch (digital) television occasionally. I am not totally out of the TV world, although I prefer reading books instead. Still, Internet may make the digital television set(-top box) obsolete very fast ;-)  Let's see.

Comments

[Panagiotis Kampylis]

Hi,

I prefer searching the web,reading books and listening to the radio!
Last surveys reveal that Internet is more popular among young people than TV! Let's see...

Pan

[Mikko Ahonen]

Hello Pan

Good point, Internet(-TV) may prove so popular that it will change habits of youngsters and ... older generations as well!

I am curious to find out what will happen with Joost:

https://www.joost.com/

I was invited as a beta tester to this service, but the testing system and accounts seem to be buggy. (Years ago I had similar problems when testing Skype, Joost is based on Skype-P2P-technology.) Let's hope that I can finally test Joost and then I can provide you all a story :-)

Cheers

Mikko