Future shock doesn’t

Out with the old...

Video cassette recorders, laserdisc players, television sets, 32-inch satellite dishes, cable TV, company modems.

All becoming a thing of the past soon to be replaced by better and more advanced technology.

At least that is my thinking. But people like my parents are another matter. They aren’t ready to give up their cable that continues to go out on its own every now and then much less their 15-year-old VCR that has to be repaired every six months. My parents also don’t understand how my generation (though I am not one of them) can spend hours on end in front of their home computers talking to strangers in chatrooms on AOL and cruising the Internet.

I believe it was Bill Gates who said kids, ten years from now, will be spending more time browsing the World Wide Web as either a form of entertainment or for education purposes instead of watching television.

In with the new!

Why send mail through the postal service and pay high long distance phone bills when you can email your friends and relatives in cyberspace? The only purpose the postal service will serve years from now is to send packages and maybe holiday cards and that’s it.

Where I lived in Chicago, cable television never really took off until a couple years after I moved to Dallas. Pay TV was already available in most of Texas as late as 1980. If homeowners didn’t care for cable, they could choose satellite television or direct TV. The first year I was here, almost every other house on the block had a satellite dish in their back yard making their homes look like personalized military defense systems.

Those dishes have disappeared now replaced by small 15-inch disks people can buy for as low as $250.00 and still pay almost the monthly equivalent of what cable costs.

Out with the old...

It isn’t unusual now to see hotels, service stations and even banks to have small satellite dishes placed on their roofs but it isn’t for entertainment purposes. The equipment is the cheapest and latest form of communication and the quickest way for companies with computer helpdesks to dial into places with technical problems instead of modems.

But the technology that has society most excited about is High Density Television sets known as HDTV. People who saw them firsthand at the Texas State Fair said the picture quality was crystal clear. The first sets, which are expected to be out late next year, will start at $5,000.

The only difference I can see with them is people will get to watch the nightly news, “Star Trek” and “ER” reruns in a letterbox theatrical format. Personally, I’ll wait until the government makes it a requirement for me to have one which will be in 2006 when the current technology on receiving programs will be obsolete.

In with the new!

What I am excited about are the new Digital Video Disc players, known as DVD, which arrived on the market last April. Of course, various pessimists I know at work wouldn’t embrace the format because the technology will meet the same fate as Betamax.

Because only a few distributors like Columbia/Tri-Star Pictures and Warner Home Video were the only ones going to the new format at the time, some of my coworkers said it made no sense to spend $500 and up on a player when only less than 100 titles were available much less the fact very few video stores were renting them.

That hasn’t stopped anyone else from jumping on the bandwagon. Although recordable DVD players are still a couple years away, Video Business Magazine reported in its Sept. 8 issue the number of players sold so far totaled 382,000 units.

And it didn’t take long for other distributors to take notice of recent sales. As a result, several companies including MCA Home Video and Disney are the latest companies who will start releasing titles on DVD before the end of the year. The reason for its rise in popularity is one, just about all the films available can be seen in both widescreen and pan-and-scan formats on what is the same size as a compact disc. And two, such soon-to-be released titles like Warner Brothers’ “Contact” (1997) and “Conspiracy Theory” (1997) will run for as low as $20 to $30 as opposed to the video cassette suggested retail price of $100.00.

What this means in the coming years for studios and video stores; provided the rental chains can produce something to keep customers renting films and not be taken over by pay TV’s “video on-demand”, is exactly as a friend of mine put it that DVD stands for. “Dollars for video distributors.”

What this will mean for consumers, however, is those who want the new technology are going to have to buy movies like the Star Wars, Star Trek and Godfather films all over again, whenever 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures decides to go the DVD route.

At least those people who have video libraries exceeding 200 titles plus can take comfort in the fact they’ll have more space at their house after tossing those cheap, flimsy wooden video cassette storage cases in the trash and selling their videos for money at some used bookstore.

©10/22/97

A conspiracy theory of his own

Everyone loves a conspiracy.

An outlandish word most everyone thinks about today whenever a national tragedy occurs. Ever since witnesses say they heard shots fired from the grassy knoll the day President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Nov. 22, 1963, a swarm of doubt and paranoia has led Americans and the world to believe that behind every groundbreaking news story is a cover-up.

What happened to Princess Diana in August is the latest example. On the night the world learned she died in a car crash; a coworker said the whole thing was probably a plot.

He wasn’t the only one to conclude this. Took the news media less than a week to start reporting of possible conspiracy scenarios.

Shows like “Primetime Live” last month questioned driver Henri Paul’s behavior at the Ritz, who according to the hotel’s surveillance cameras acting like he is in complete control of himself. What the program didn’t tell viewers though is the known fact some people who drink can develop a high tolerance to alcohol without anyone knowing they are drunk.

And just when I thought French investigators were about ready to close the books on what was the most watched televised event since JFK’s funeral; blaming the cause of the crash primarily on Henri Paul and not necessarily the paparazzi, new stories are surfacing.

Now there are reports a second car may have been involved. French investigators have apparently found fragments of taillight covers near the scene believed to belong to a Fiat that might have hit the princess’ car from behind before the crash.

A story reported by the Associated Press Sept. 21 says a couple of “unidentified witnesses” say they saw “a small hatchback...near the smashed Mercedes” that raced away from the scene going about 70 m.p.h.

“My own feeling is that these were people in a hurry not to be there,” said British lawyer Gary Hunter who was quoted in London’s Sunday Times. “I am confident that the car was getting off the scene...it looked quite sinister.”

The fact Diana’s bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones can’t recall what happened in those final moments before the crash will only raise more questions than answers.

This comes as no shock considering the public still has doubts about a couple of “unresolved mysteries.”

Earlier this year, journalist Pierre Salinger released photos to the media of what he says was a missile believed to be in the sky shortly before TWA Flight 800 exploded shortly after takeoff last July. Salinger has since gone on record accusing the government, law enforcement agencies and the military of being involved in a massive cover-up.

His contention is the crash was caused by our nation’s armed forces who he thinks may have been in the area conducting military exercises at the time of the explosion.

A segment of “20/20” shot earlier last summer, however, showed the probability existed that a spark from a half empty fuel tank on the plane could have brought down the 747.

In the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, defense attorneys for suspect Terry Nichols will mention again that “John Doe 2” still exists or died in the explosion of the Murrah Federal Building that killed 168 people two years ago.

This theory, however, much less the fact the terrorist act may have been the result of an international conspiracy, did not convince the previous jury who convicted bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh last June to die by lethal injection.

Even after the guilty verdict was read, however, people still didn’t believe McVeigh was the only one involved.

A poll taken in the June 16 issue of Time said 77 percent of Americans believe law enforcement officials have not apprehended everyone involved in the Oklahoma City bombing.

The following week, an article in the June 23 issue, said militia groups sent out “reports of seismographic readings that pointed to two distinct explosions, 10 seconds apart on April 19, 1995.”

The article quoted a Washington State patriot leader saying, “Incontrovertible scientific evidence exists to refute the single-bomb theory.”

And so Princess Diana, like the JFK Assassination, TWA Flight 800, and Oklahoma City before her, is the latest in a long list of national tragedies people still continue to question that includes the deaths of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Marilyn Monroe, and the events surrounding Roswell, Watergate, Iran Contra, Whitewater and the Branch Davidian Siege in Waco, Texas.

Thank the tabloid television news media, the internet, liberal Hollywood and print journalism for all this.

Because of them, the word “trust” has not been a part of society’s vocabulary since 1963 and that is just as sad and tragic as the incidents themselves.

©10/8/97