It’s 8 a.m., July 1, and I am sitting in the Seattle airport on my way to Orange County for the weekend.
My gripe — besides the fact that there really must be no sun up here — is this:
It’s not even 8:15 in the morning yet, and there’s a television behind me with sound shrieking from overhead speakers, invading what could be a peaceful morning. There are about 30 people in the gate area, and 20 of them have their eyes, their consciousness and their morning glued to the boob tube hanging from the wall.
As I sit here, my back to the screeching commercials as my only defense, I can’t help being just a bit ticked off. Being a journalist who will live on the support of advertisers, I of all people respect the right of commercials and media to occupy a place in our lives.
But, we as consumers have a fundamental right to choose when we are going to expose ourselves to information technologies.
I should have the right to sit here and read my book without the distraction of that blaring box screaming for my attention.
Now, I can admit that the people around me also have the right to watch the TV if they want but forcing that chaos into other people’s consciousness is as intrusive as allowing my fellow travelers to smoke cigarettes in this waiting area. While second-hand smoke is detrimental to a person’s physical health, some people find that their mental health suffers when they are forced to be around the TV.
We fence off smoking rooms in the airport for people who want to kill their lungs. Why not enclose TV rooms for people who want to fry their brains?
When I first arrived at the airport, there was a little girl sitting behind me with her mother. She had an open book in her lap, but her eyes were fixated on the screen. I can’t help but think she would have been reading that book had it been quiet in here. Instead, she was watching fashion commercials that were masked as a CNN Headline News report.
Well, it’s almost 8:30 now, and the number of people waiting for flights has increased. The little girl is gone, but there are plenty of other people sitting around, reading materials in their laps and eyes stolen by an invasion into our lives.
I’m going to try to read some more of my book — a critical analysis of television titled “Channels of Discourse, Reassembled” — but maybe I’ll just go find a smoking room to save myself the trouble and the second-hand distraction.