Actually, you already did. Turn your brain on, that is. At least according to Steve Jobs (born Feb. 24, 1955), who said in an interview four years ago, “We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.” Since you’re here reading my blog, instead of watching whatever there is on TV, you must want to turn your brain on. I hope it’s working.
Steve Jobs clearly doesn’t have a high opinion of TV.
When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth. (Interview in WIRED magazine (February 1996)
There is some decent stuff on TV, though I think most of it is on cable, not network TV (and there’s plenty of trash on cable, too). But computers certainly give a lot more scope for your mind to learn, analyze, communicate, and create. Jobs also said, regarding computers, “What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”
I’ve always liked riding a bicycle, so I like that analogy. I love walking also, but I do that more for the exercise and enjoyment of it than to get anywhere. On a bike I can actually get to quite a few places in a reasonable time frame. And I get exercise while I’m at it. I could do a lot of learning and creating without a computer, but it’s so much faster – and more fun – with the computer.
I suppose what Jobs said about TV – that it gives people what they want – could also be said of computers. Some of what’s on the internet, of course, is what people want to provide, not what others necessarily want to use. The ability to self-publish content for free on a personal blog like this invites people simply express themselves, whether or not anyone else cares what they have to say.
But most professionally produced content, whether on the internet or to run on your personal computer, is designed to make money. There are violent computer games because people want to play them. There is a huge amount of porn on the internet because people pay to see it. But fortunately there is also an immense wealth of resources on every imaginable topic, because someone somewhere is interested in it.
So get your brain on a bicycle and give it a workout!
