Be My TV

I got to attend the Interactive conference at South by Southwest this year and was often reminded of how poor a substitute digital connections are for the real thing and what an epidemic of isolation and loneliness is taking place.

One presenter pointed out what a totally different experience it is when music is shared in the room as opposed to isolated in our headphones.

The best thing I heard at SXSW was a bold keynote from musician/producer T Bone Burnett, who talked about the “growing understanding that the internet has morphed into an insidious surveillance and propaganda machine,” calling for radical accountability for our tech giants and asserting that “the artists are our only hope.”

All of this made me think of my song called Be My TV who’s chorus goes, “I think my TV has been watching me, it cuts up my dreams to sell ads for jeans.”

The youtube video has been taken down, but you can listen to it above (he starts at 2:28) and read the full text of his SXSW keynote at Tbone’s site.

Here is a short interview which references it and gives you a few of the main points.