Puny Little Human

Lean Back

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The first month that I got Netflix, it was amazing. You could blaze thru your favorite movies and shows for days at a time.

The second month of Netflix, I ended up spending 10 to 15 minutes browsing through some serious dreck before finally finding something worth watching. Maybe 5% of Netflix is truly amazing stuff, the rest if seriously dreck, and good films are not being released to Netflix at nearly a satisfactory rate. Admittedly, I’m probably an edge case in terms of taste and rate of media consumption, but I know that this is not just a problem that I have.

Which is why I think that new modes of lean back media consumption that are building out recommendation engines are going to have their day. It’s going to be a narrow window of opportunity for winners to emerge in the next 2 years. That’s why I’m so excited about the NYC video hack day the fellas at Shelby (including my boy Chris Kurdziel) are planning for early September.

Video is only starting to take off. Long form premium content creators and publishers will have to figure out a good way to address it. Premium inventory against amazing shows such as the West Wing the Wire will grow and a highly correlated long tail inventory will emerge for cult shows like The League or The Guild. The ability to both serve those videos and monetize thru extremely valuable ad units will be something to be coveted in the near future.

I’m really excited.

Things that I won’t need in the future

Image via Wikipedia

Over the weekend, my fiance and I were talking about our friends with grown children that never owned a TV. We talked and agreed that when we won’t be having a TV in the house. But what was in the back of my head was that… the issue would be even greater than that. The amount of stimulation that our children will have is going to be absolutely insane.

But the thing is, there are going to be a number of things that I will likely not need in 5 to 10 years. It got me thinking:

Television

Between Netflix, Hulu and tablet and large sized displays, TVs are not going to be necessary anymore. And now that there are leanback solutions like Shelby, it’s going to solve the problem of: “What am I going to watch?”

A land-line phone

Obviously.

A car

I don’t ever want to own a car and deal with the hassle of buying fuel and maintaining a vehicle. If we end up living in the suburbs or a rural area, then we’ll need a car. But between having an electric scooter and car share, owning a car is no longer a yuppie family necessity. FYI, the Ithaca Carshare program is fantastic.

A bookshelf

Honestly, this is one that makes me the most sad. But on my iPad, I have probably an entire book shelf worth of books, articles, and readings in PDF format. Not to mention another whole case worth of movies and TV series thru Netflix. But I am a sucker for the written word. There is something about it that is… sacred.

I imagine my house having a library with 3 walls of books and a bay window on the last side. That would be ideal. This is probably something I am going to get regardless of technology.