Television used to have three channels. Somehow we found something.
Today we have hundreds of channels, half a dozen streaming services, endless on-demand libraries, personalized recommendations, watchlists, favorites, and algorithms studying our viewing habits.
And somehow we can still spend forty minutes looking for something to watch.
Technology solved the problem of limited choice by giving us unlimited choice. Nobody mentioned that choosing would become the evening’s main entertainment.
It’s the same progress we celebrated in We Cut the Cord, Then Subscribed to Eight Smaller Cords, where escaping cable somehow resulted in rebuilding it one subscription at a time. And The Algorithm Knows What You Want shows what happens when technology decides that choosing for ourselves has become too much work.
Back when television had three channels, the question was simple: What’s on?
Now the question is: Which app has it, are we subscribed, is it included, does it have commercials, and do we remember the password?
Three channels suddenly sounds relaxing.
Explore more Chad Geepeety™ cartoons about streaming, television, subscriptions, algorithms, and technology giving us more choices than we know what to do with.
