HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2012-07-05, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 5, 2012. PAGE 5.
How long have we had TV remotes to
play with? Ten years, you figure?
Twenty, maybe? You’re way off.
TV browsers were around before most
of the people reading this column were born.
Before man walked on the moon. Before
the Toronto Maple Leafs won their last
Stanley Cup, even. We’re talking Mesozoic
here.
The TV remote has been around since 1955
when a Chicago inventor named Eugene
Polley invented it. Polley’s prototype wasn’t
exactly the sleek plastic pellet with eleven
dozen buttons that we’re used to losing
in the couch pillows nowadays. His
invention looked like a ray gun from Sci Fi
special effects. It had a pistol-grip handle
and a trigger and it was called the Zenith
Flash-Matic. It wasn’t pretty, but it did
the job.
Well…sort of. Polley’s ray gun worked
a bit like a flashlight. The viewer pointed it at
one of the four corners of the TV screen
and pulled the trigger. The top left-hand
corner of the screen contained a photo
cell that would turn the TV on and off.
You aimed at the top right hand corner if
you wanted to go to the next channel; the
bottom left-hand corner if you wanted to go
back to a previous channel; and the bottom
right hand corner if you wanted to mute out
what Polley called “those noisy TV
commercials”.
Or perhaps I’ve mixed up the corners. A lot
of viewers did, which was one big complaint
about the Flash-Matic. Another was the fact
that the TV photo cells frequently reacted with
ordinary sunlight to change channels, go on
and off, or mess with the volume, all on their
own.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was revolutionary.
Eugene Polley modestly suggested his
invention was “the most important invention
since the wheel”.
Well, hardly – but it was a major influence
on television productions and the way we
watch the box.
Before Polley’s Flash-Matic, viewers who
wanted to adjust the volume or change the
channel were forced to put their feet on the
floor, levitate to a vertical position, walk
across the room and interact with the TV
manually. Humans, being the lethargic
creatures we are, often elected to put up with
whatever drivel was emanating from the
screen, rather than, you know, actually get off
our lard butts and move.
The result was some astonishingly mediocre
television fare (anyone remember The Arthur
Godfrey Show?) Eugene Polley’s Flash-Matic
changed that. It allowed viewers to be
discriminating and lazy. We swiftly developed
into a species with the attention span of
a fruit fly. Horatio flapping his gums on CSI
Miami? Zap it in favour of the Nature Channel.
Oops, a ‘pollution special’ – bo-ring!
ZAP! Check ESPN. Uh-oh – Jeep commercial.
ZAP.
The Flash-Matic is no longer with us, but its
heirs and successors are. Back in its day
Flash-Matic had to contend with no more
than 12 channels, maximum. Today’s
browsers navigate a universe of hundreds
of channels, not to mention computer
games, the Internet and our personal music
library.
No need to get off the couch at all, really.
We hardly need our legs anymore. Perhaps
over the next millennia or two our DNA
will morph and mutate so that those massive,
now useless thigh and calf muscles get
diverted to where they’d really be of use – in
our thumbs.
Eugene Polley won’t be there to see it.
He died last month at the age of 96, still
convinced that he’d made a seminal
contribution to human civilization. “The
flush toilet might be the most civilized
invention ever devised,” he told a reporter,
“but the remote control is the next most
important.”
Um, actually Eugene, there are those among
us who wouldn’t have minded if that first
remote control had been accidentally flushed
down the toilet.
Comments? arblack43@shaw.ca
Arthur
Black
Other Views The father of the couch potato
Anyone and everyone my age knows the
iconic line (that I’ve begun above) that
comes out of Dr. Emmett Brown
mouth in the cliffhanger ending of Back To The
Future. “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t
need roads.”
The movie ends and Back To The Future II
begins right where the first one left off. A
futuristic-looking Brown brings Marty McFly
into the future, far into the future... the year
2015.
Once in the future... all the way in 2015...
Brown, who has acclimatized to the future,
tells McFly that he’ll have to ditch his 1985
clothes and look the part for 2015. He outfits
him with an auto-fitting and auto-drying
jacket.
Unless someone is really hard at work on
this in a lab somewhere, I don’t see this
happening in the next three years.
Then, of course, there’s the issue of the
Hoverboards. Don’t even get me started on the
Hoverboards. We were promised Hoverboards
and there’s a whole generation that wants the
head of whoever’s responsibility it was to
develop those and didn’t come through.
This, of course, is relevant because last week
there was a bit of a hoax going around
featuring a picture of the famous digital
display board in the film’s DeLorean.
However, on the “destination” portion of the
screen, it read June 27, 2012. The hoax tricked
a lot of people though, who believed that last
Wednesday was the day Dr. Brown and McFly
fictionally landed in the future.
No doubt it left a lot of people wondering
how far we really have come over the years.
Sure, we have iPads, but what about auto-
fitting clothing? We have nothing even close to
Hoverboards and then, of course, there are the
flying cars.
The iconic line “where we’re going, we don’t
need roads” introduced a whole generation of
kids to the notion that flying cars were just a
few decades off. Right now it seems the
furthest advances we’ve made are hybrid and
electric cars that save on gas. Back To The
Future director Robert Zemeckis and writer
Bob Gale knew we’d need to ditch the gas in
the future, so the DeLorean from the future
used garbage for fuel. We’re certainly not there
yet – that would solve two of the world’s
biggest problems in one shot.
And this isn’t the first time that Back To The
Future has disappointed my generation. There
was, of course, Back To The Future III, which
shan’t be discussed. I’ll only get upset. But
that’s not the disappointment I’m talking
about.
Back to the Hoverboards.
Everyone my age went to school with a kid
who “had” a Hoverboard. Of course, you could
only buy them in the U.S. This was all too
believable when I was a kid. How many times
were you watching cartoons only to see an ad
for a new G.I. Joe set, or Transformers toy and
on your trip to the local toy store, they didn’t
know what you were talking about? I know I
was disappointed hundreds of times.
These kids had families that “had a house in
Florida” and their Hoverboard was safely
stored. There. In Florida. How disappointing...
and convenient.
Of course, we were smart enough to doubt
them, but when the first rebuttal came back,
saying that they were telling the truth, we were
all hooked.
Last week’s picture was indeed a hoax, it
can’t help but get you thinking if we’re just
three years away from Hoverboards and flying
cars. Logic says no, but there’s still hope.
Where we’re going...
While surfing the internet on my
lunch breaks I often find things that
make me smile or make me laugh
and I usually want to share them with people.
Recently, however, I stumbled upon
something incredibly scary.
I stumbled upon the fact that, despite my
arguments to the contrary and despite the time
I spend trying to help people of all walks of
life, I can be incredibly intolerant of others.
No, this isn’t based in racism or homophobia
or anything big like that. I believe that,
regardless of your race, your religion or your
life choices you should be allowed to live a life
free of harassment provided you’re not
harassing others.
This discovery of mine came when I read
this small blurb under a Canadian flag: “To all
the Americans wanting to move to Canada
because of Obamacare: We don’t want you
either. Please stay where you are.”
I laughed, and I don’t mean like kids do
nowadays when they type “LOL” and barely
smile. I laughed and I laughed hard.
Ignoring the fact that Americans is a term
that actually refers to everyone from North and
South America (a mistake I know I make, but
that, once in print, can’t be fixed), I found
myself thinking this post was more fact than
farce.
Obamacare, for those who haven’t stumbled
upon it yet, is a system of healthcare somewhat
similar to Canada’s that U.S. President Barack
Obama has been trying to implement in the
United States to provide health care for
everyone.
It was recently decided in the supreme court
that the system was not against any major laws
and could be implemented.
In response, many United States residents
were unhappy and some said things like they
were moving to someplace with a less
communist government, like Canada.
So, getting back to where I started this
column; I found myself feeling the sentiment
of “Stay where you are” was one I could get
behind.
My Canada (and yes, I’m taking a big liberty
with the “My” part there) is a Canada where
we are a bit closer to the left than we are to the
right. It’s a place where healthcare is provided
and where people can live a little better than
they can in the United States.
My Canada has a government called the
Canadian Government, not the Harper
Government. My Canada is a pretty well-
defined place and I don’t think there’s room
for people from the United States who are
running away from their own government.
At that moment, just for the briefest period
of time, it crossed my mind that we should set
up some kind of long fence and keep these
people out of Canada.
And at that point I realized I was reacting to
the United States in the same way that some
people from the United States react to Mexico
and its citizens.
While I have long believed that we are in the
Pax Americana and that we are soon to witness
the falling of the United States as a true centre
of power for the world, I have never once felt
that the people there were any less than the
people in Canada. However, for one dark
moment, I really felt that we needed to protect
what was ours from those who simply want a
free ride.
I’m sure there is enough evidence out there
for me to dig up to justify my momentary lapse
in common sense and surge in national pride,
but I don’t want to find it.
Instead, I want to admit to myself that I have
let myself been swayed by the media (and
notice there that the act is my own, I’m not
blaming the media, I’m saying it was my own
fault) into believing that Canada is a better
place to live and that Canadians are,
inherently, better people than their neighbours
to the south.
I hope to make myself a better person than
that in the future, but part of realizing that is
realizing that I am capable of lumping people
together like that.
I do believe that we shouldn’t let people into
Canada who are running from completely
logical decisions made by their government,
but obviously putting up a fence and turning
away migration isn’t a valid option.
The entire episode sent me back to public
school and to high school where this kind of
behaviour isn’t only allowed, but encouraged.
Sure, no teacher ever says go out and be a
bigot, but they do encourage you to have
school spirit and national pride, two of the
worst forms of accepted intolerance in the
world.
As a student you’re taught to cheer for the
people you know, the people you go to school
with. Rallies are held to enforce the fact that
your group of geographically-assigned people
are better than a different group of
geographically assigned people simply
because you can yell the loudest.
Fast forward a few years and you find people
touting the glories of Canada over those of
other nations.
I don’t like this and I guess that’s what I
have to work on in myself first.
No one area or school or country is better
than another or more valid.
Each person should be valued as a person
and not as a citizen under the people who
spend their tax dollars.
And to those who want to come to Canada
because of Obamacare, well your value is less
than what’s wanted in my geographic region.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Obamacare is not a reason to move
People grow through experience if they
meet life honestly and courageously. This is
how character is built.
– Eleanor Roosevelt
Final Thought