![\"jim_0071\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/madisoncountycourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/jim_0071.jpg\")
<\/a>By Jim Bona<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n(Hamilton, NY \u2013 Feb. 2015) I have a friend who told me the story of his family gathering around the television set in the early days of broadcast TV.\u00a0 In those days, it was often thought that the little man inside the tube could actually see into our living rooms.<\/p>\n
One particular night, this was the topic of conversation.\u00a0 As his mother, who was the most anti-tv and most suspicious of the new contraption, got up out of her chair to change the channel and the commercial came on (no remotes back then), the voice from within the set barked: “DON’T touch that dial!\u00a0 She froze, hand outstretched in front of the TV and almost fainted. That was all the confirmation that she needed to be completely convinced until the day she died, that there was indeed a little man in there that knew everything that was going on in their living room.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, the little man lives on, as we may well know.\u00a0 Turns out that many of our TVs that are connected to the Internet have within them the technology to track our every move on the device.\u00a0 How long we watch. What we watch. When we change channels.\u00a0 Everything.\u00a0 In fact, some user manuals for TVs with voice controls have the admonition to not reveal delicate personal information, because it can be heard by the people listening on the other end.\u00a0 Honest.\u00a0 It used to be that if that information was to be had, you would either fill out a questionnaire that was sent to you in the mail, or a little black box was attached to your TV, which would figure out what and how long you were watching.\u00a0 Both of these options, the user agreed to for them to collect data on them. Now, it would appear that they are collecting data whether you like it or not.<\/p>\n
The burning questions is: what is being done with the information that is gathered? Maybe just another good reason to kill your TV or at least not upgrade from your CRT (cathode ray tube)? Maybe not the greenest, but a good one nevertheless.<\/p>\n
Jim Bona is recently retired and a resident of the village of Hamilton for more than 30 years.\u00a0\u00a0 He is passionate about all things green\u2026and a few other things too. He can be reached at: madnews@m3pmedia.com<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Going Green By Jim Bona (Hamilton, NY \u2013 Feb. 2015) I have a friend who told me the story of his family gathering around the television set in the early days of broadcast TV.\u00a0 In those days, it was often thought that the little man inside the tube could actually see into our living rooms. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43meu-fIl","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}