It could only have come from the mouth of my youngest child. The older two would never have thought of it because it was "normal" to their experience of the world.
What happened? My two oldest children were sitting watching TV and, as usual, they cut to the commercial break. One commercial became two, became then... then all of a sudden our youngest looked up and asked them why they were watching commercials? She wanted to know why they hadn't skipped over the commercials with the fast forward or skip 30 seconds button on the remote? The two older kids had to explain that they were watching the show as it aired on the satellite and that they couldn't skip the commercials. This puzzled her greatly.
Yes, in a world of DVRs my pre-teens are mostly still OK with commercials, my wife and I sometimes let them run so we can talk between them, get a drink or use the bathroom, like we did in the days before the DVR but our youngest has no time for commercials, no understanding why people would watch them.
It's a generational difference created by technological advancements. It's something we just have to live with. I'm no going to try and convince her of the benefits of commercial breaks (the one's mentioned above) she'll just tell me that you can pause the show at any time to do that. Perhaps she's right but I've been through Pavlovian conditioning and can not to pee until the network tells me that its time to go! If they ever drop commercials from the TV I might burst!
Perhaps I should start a campaign to save the commercial break. Perhaps I could educate my kids on my perceived value for the breaks and perhaps even try and condition them to see the breaks the way I do. It might work for a while until a stranger comes into my home and questions my sanity, why am I so old fashioned, why haven't I adopted the latest practices, why haven't I learned to live in today's world? I don't have an answer.
In a world in which education is embracing technological innovation, projection systems, smarboards, web 2.0 etc why is the church lagging so far behind? Sure, we can condition our kids to embrace the old but what about the stranger who comes through our doors and hasn't had the conditioning? Will they feel like they are still in the 21st Century or will it be like stepping into a time machine?
