From Virtuality to Reality:
Memoirs from a Reformed TV Addict

From The Occidental Observer, August 26, 2009

Ten years ago, I lived in, and worked from, a one-bedroom flat in East Finchley, London. I had a large, rectangular living-dining room area, part of which was my office. My day would begin with the arrival of the postman before 9 in the morning, which brought packets with CDs and orders from customers; it would continue with the daily processing of orders, answering of emails, and preparation and mailing of packets; and it would end with research and development work.

At 7pm, however, I stopped and switched on the television — invariably to watch the news. And from that time on, until I went to bed, and interrupted only by occasional bouts of guitar playing, I would remain seated or lying down on the sofa, in front of the television, watching show after show — anything ranging from the mildly entertaining to the least tedious of whatever was on offer. On Fridays I stayed up later than usual (watching television), and on weekends I switched the device on even earlier, and remained hypnotized by the screen into the wee hours of the morning. I calculate that between 1994 and 2001 I averaged over 7 hours per day, 50 hours per week, 2,548 hours per year, and 17,836 hours in total — a PhD takes approximately 7,300 hours to complete.

Fortunately for me, I was not entirely unproductive during this time: between 1995 and 1998 I composed three albums, drew many album covers, and taught myself high-end computer programs; I also weight trained three times a week, had girlfriends, and found time to read a fair number of cognitively-stimulating books. (The latter included Tipler and Barrow’s The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Roger Penrose’s The Emperor’s New Mind, Preston’s Franco, Coveney and Highfield’s The Arrow of Time, plus some classic fiction.)

However, since the Summer of 2002, when I put an end to my TV addiction, I have often asked myself: How much more could I have accomplished in my 20s, had I not wasted so much time on an ultimately unrewarding and unproductive activity? And: How much better prepared I would have been to meet the challenges of the dystopian future I anticipate in my novel Mister (a future that is coming) had I spent that time learning about whom and what is behind the world I live in, instead of remaining submerged in (and distracted by) the feel-good fictions that have been designed to conceal them. . . . Read the whole article.