Ghost of a Chance

Today is the day that analog broadcasts were slated to cease and indeed upwards of 700 stations will terminate such transmissions.

The total shutdown of this technocultural juggernaut will take place on June 12th, we are told, and let’s cross our fingers that is so. Giving pause to the possibilities still latent, on this most monumental occasion of forced obsolescence, for this is the beginning of the end of analog tv.

With the end of analog broadcasts, there will be a better chance of getting ghosts.  More broadly, access to the means of electronic cultural production will be enhanced with the innundation of abruptly obsolete television recievers in second-hand flows.  Swells of VCRs, recievers and other  transmission devices will fall into dis-use, to be retrieved and re-purposed and re-imagined by artists, anomalists and analog aficianados of all stripes.

Gravely, these utopian twinkles do not so much as tickle the tentacles of  the unfathomable and labyrinthine global e-waste market, nor  intend to be an endorsement of such shadowy and devestating affairs. Still, in hopes of countering the perceived obsolescence, sure to ensue, then an advocacy of new uses is to be amplified.

Until June, a ghost of a chance for ghosts as such activities are still relegated to the margins by (the soon fleeing)  commerical broadcasts.  Not much longer for these high-power signals, currently clogging the airwaves, to interfere with communiques from other worlds.

Do Not Adjust Your Set, Yet

Perhaps another node in the concern over extra-terrestrial terrorism that Fife Symington and associates discussed in the Fall of 2007, the incoming Obama administration is planning on postponing the transition to digital television.  On the surface this of course is framed as a chance to catch consumers up to speed against the lagging distribution and production of converter box vouchers.  For electronic anomalists of all stripes, this is also an unfortunate delay in freeing up the analog airwaves to interference-free research.

As outlined in Patrolling the Ether (shown above), there are advantages to the obsolescence of analog broadcasts and great expectations for the new lands, forms and forums to be engaged across the etheric sea.