al back in 1955 on his old console
television. Even if he suspected that he was watching a commercial
designed to put him in a state of anxiety, in order to change the
channel and remove himself from the externally imposed tension, he
would have to move the popcorn off his lap, pull up the lever on his
recliner, walk up to the television set and manually turn the dial.
All that amounts to a somewhat rebellious action for a bleary-eyed
television viewer. To sit through the rest of the commercial, however
harrowing, might cost him only a tiny quantity of human energy until
the pills come out of the drawer. The brain, being lazy, chooses the
path of least resistance and Dad sits through the whole commercial.

Flash forward to 1990. A kid with a remote control in his hand makes
the same mental calculation: an ounce of stress, or an infinitesimally
small quantity of human effort to move his finger an eighth of an inch
and he's free! The remote control gives viewers the power to remove
themselves from the storyteller's spell with almost no effort. Watch a
kid (or observe yourself) next time he channel surfs from program to
program. He's not changing the channel because he's bored, but he
surfs away when he senses that he's being put into an imposed state of
tension.

The remote control breaks down the what. It allows a viewer to
deconstruct the content of television media, and avoid falling under
the programmer's spell. If a viewer does get back around the dial to
watch the end of a program, he no longer has the same captivated
orientation. Kids with remotes aren't watching television, they are
watching the television (the physical machine) playing 'television',
putting it through its paces.

Just as the remote control allowed a generation to deconstruct the
content of television, the video game joystick demystified its
technology. Think back to the first time you ever saw a video game. It
was probably Pong, that primitive black and white depiction of a
ping-pong table, with a square on either side of the screen
representing the bat and a tiny white dot representing the ball. Now,
remember the exhilaration you felt at playing that game for the very
first time. Was it because you had always wanted an effective
simulation of ping-pong? Did you celebrate because you could practice
without purchasing an entire table and installing it in the basement?
Of course not. You were celebrating the simple ability to move the
pixels on