The capability to filter out sports content, for example, excludes me from some cultural events which I, as a participant in this society, should probably know about. (I still don’t know why Manchester and Chelsea went to Moscow.) If I only heard about things which I or my personal network found interesting, I fear that I would be further isolated from people I just haven’t met yet. Indeed, I sought out neat stuff like Twitter despite the fact that I don’t know anyone personally who uses it.

I love TiVo and time/place shifting as much as the next guy (maybe more), but as we move further away from the old-fashioned cultural events of live one-time-only one-size-fits-all broadcasts, what will we have to bind us together as a society? No doubt, we will need to find new and relevant to unite us. I just hope that I get to hear about these things in time. I’ll be looking to bellwethers like you, JP, to keep me clued in!

Really enjoy the blog which I discovered after LeWeb. I think in this case people are saying “Don’t tell me yet”, since spoiling the outcome of a match or a soap cliffhanger ruins the experience. But there are events like elections where people want to know the “score” in real time, but may want to watch the analysis/argumentation at a different time to suite them. Live events (like marathon pop concerts or coverage of disasters) will always attract the largest audiences to the live stream/broadcast – its a shared experience. I asked kids why they voted in Idols when their vote was one of 100,000 a minute. They told me that it was because it was live, the event wasn’t finished yet and there still a chance that their action could change things.

I now hardly ever watch live TV but I don’t watch more TV than before, I just watch more interesting TV – I never find myself watching something just because there’s “nothing better on”. I even timeshift live events like Formula 1, but usually only by half an hour so I can skip the adverts and catch up with live by the time they cross the chequered flag. That said, I have occasionally been caught out and heard the result before I’ve watched the race. I think there’s a bigger issue with sporting events and competitions because if you just catch sight of a headline it can give away the whole result. It’s less of a problem with drama shows like Lost and Heroes because a headline is unlikely to give away the whole plot (unless it’s a plot like “Who killed J.R.?”)

-Balaji S.

To me it’s like frozen food. When I first learnt that people couuld freeze food, I had this expectation of what was freezable. And that expectation changed over time as people “played with the medium”.

I think time-shifting will go that way. I remember saving up “connected Bunthorne” crosswords for a rainy day, DIY timeshifting of a different sort.

I’m pretty sure this phenomena is only conducive to entertainment events, like season finales or playoff games. I do recall going out on social events and then feeling my communication restricted with others because I didn’t want to stumble upon the score of a game I had recorded. I don’t want this to become a habit though and I wonder what the best way is to achieve maximal satisfaction.