I saw a TV in 8 of 11 pictures. All the pictures were remarkable in their austerity. The first picture struck me by the wind generator, satellite dish, and TV next to the other utilitarian possessions.
Conclusion: information ranks right up there with food and shelter.
It's entertainment. From my experience in China I've rarely seen a news channel over a movie. Traditional kung fu style movies are the most common amongst the older population.
Entertainment is a method by which people acquire cultural facts, knowledge, even wisdom and philosophy. It easily extends to picking up domain specific knowledge as well, episodes often center around a scientific/technical subject which allows audiences to pickup a cursory level of knowledge in a subject otherwise foreign to them. So directly, yes, entertainment=information even in a very literal sense.
This surprises me, why people expect that they not have TVs in the countryside? Even the most remote village has some kind of power (water wheels are common, wind and solar also), then the TV, the DVD player, the karaoke machine are minimums (but cellphone is always first). The only pic without a TV...people who live on a boat, and what looks like a rich antique dealer.
I remember being up in the Anti-Atlas mountains of Morocco and the family we had dinner with had satellite TV but no running water. They had news on (Al Jazeera if I remember - but maybe Al Arabiya or something else - Saddam Hussein had been killed that night so it was BIG).
Anyway, they had a meat dinner for us as special guests but otherwise mostly had a vegetarian diet because meat was very expensive. Nonetheless, the TV was critical for both information and entertainment. They also had cell phones.
Meanwhile, I'm spending money just to improve storage of my current things - kitchen storage, organising everything inside a garage/shed, water tanks, wine storage, data storage. Yet I am usually happiest digging around in the garden or checking my plants and seeds every morning to see if they've grown 1mm overnight.
Great to get perspective and reset once in a while.
I'm keen to read on my e-reader or tablet, and simplify the things around us. My wife loves the look of books on shelves, "like a library". Instead of converting old CDs and then storing them away, we have shelves of CDs that never get touched. Can't win every one of those tame disputes.
In that respect, I think I'm fortunate to not have ever built up a collection of physical media in the first place. Once you start collecting, it's very hard to let go.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 40.5 ms ] threadConclusion: information ranks right up there with food and shelter.
Except in the Niquist/Shannon sense, or if you work for E channel...
Anyway, they had a meat dinner for us as special guests but otherwise mostly had a vegetarian diet because meat was very expensive. Nonetheless, the TV was critical for both information and entertainment. They also had cell phones.
It would annoy me greatly to own more things than I could keep track of or haven't used/looked at in the past 12 months.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0871564378
Great to get perspective and reset once in a while.
I'm keen to read on my e-reader or tablet, and simplify the things around us. My wife loves the look of books on shelves, "like a library". Instead of converting old CDs and then storing them away, we have shelves of CDs that never get touched. Can't win every one of those tame disputes.