A Look on the Lighter Side: A smart television in a crazy world

Judy Epstein

Okay, everybody,” I announced, “it’s time to go upstairs to bed!”

Then I turned our TV off.

Or rather, I tried to.

But when I pushed the “Power off” button, the screen did not go black.

Instead, it went to mostly black, but with a little message in white lettering: “Press Menu to watch FIOS TV; otherwise, turn your TV off.”

“See?  Look at that!” I shouted, waking up the husband and son who had dozed off on the couch.  “You see what it’s doing?  That’s exactly what they talked about in Wikileaks!  This must be that “fake Off” everyone is talking about, where it’s really spying on you instead!”

“Um, no, mom, you’ve got it exactly backwards. If they were spying on you through the TV, the last thing they’d want is to attract your attention with a notice like that.  Instead, they’d make sure it looked really Off.  Whereas this one is doing just the opposite, telling you it isn’t off.  That’s how you know you can trust it.”

Yeah. I’d say the word ”trust” is going too far, if you want to describe a relationship between me and a machine.

“So, tell me,” I asked him, “what does it mean when it does that?”

“What it means,” said my husband, “is that, after all these years, you still don’t know how to use the remote.”

“That’s not fair!  I’ve been doing the same thing I ever did — turning it on and off. It’s the TV that’s changed, doing something different every time.”

“Maybe you’re turning it off the wrong way,” says my son.

“How can there be a “wrong way” to turn something off?”

“It’s a Smart TV….” he started to explain.

“Stop right there.” I cut him off.

I have noticed that every time they call something smart, it just makes me feel stupid.  “If the TV is so smart, it should know what I want it to do.”

“But it’s simple.  If you left it on this setting, here, it wouldn’t do that….”

“Oh, so you’re saying it’s my fault this happens?  And not the CIA’s?”

“We’re not blaming you, sweetheart!  We’re just saying….”  My husband’s voice trails off.  “Well, I guess we are blaming you… but with love. Does that help?”

“Not really.  And I suppose it’s my fault that the alarm goes off, every time I try to do laundry?”

“Well, maybe if you remembered to disable it before you went down the stairs….”

“Next you’ll be telling me that it’s my fault the car’s headlights stay on a few minutes for you, when we come home at night, but not for me?”

My husband is cracking up now. “Maybe it likes me better!”

“I’m starting to wonder!”

“It couldn’t be because I’ve read the owner’s manual?” he continued.  “Or maybe you think it’s the CIA, hacking into your car’s headlights?”

“I wouldn’t put it past them. Who knows, any more? Remember, just the other day you had me wrapping the EZ Pass in tinfoil, so we could take it over some bridge in a rental car without them charging us twice? Now, I even keep my credit cards in their own little aluminum container.”

It used to be, only the crazy people wrapped their wallets in tinfoil.  Now, you’re crazy if you don’t.  And it used to be the crazies who thought the CIA was spying on them through their TV sets.  Now, it turns out, they weren’t crazy at all — just ahead of their time.

What’s crazy, nowadays, is all the rest of the world.

“Come to think of it, Judy, aren’t you worried that someone could hack into your laptop? And spy on you? Seems to me that’s the first thing you’d worry about.”

“Oh, I’m ready for that.  I already have a post-it note over the webcam.”

“How did you know to do that? I’m just curious.”

“I saw it on TV.”  I get all my tech updates from “Criminal Minds” on CBS.

“And what about your cell phone?  Do you want me to show you some encryption apps?”

“Are you kidding?  I get all the encryption I can handle, just trying to type what I mean in a text message.  Before I know it, ‘Take a look’ turns into ‘Tesla Wookie,’ and ‘Sorry about that’ is ‘Stormy, A Bat’! I couldn’t make less sense if I tried! Not even the CIA could decode that.”

So the only thing saving me from a crazy world is auto-correct?  Now, that’s the true crazy.

Share this Article