Overexposed

Digital fine tunes TV programming

This article is interesting in its own right--TV over the internet, high definition programming, video on your mobile phone, la-dee-da--but what I find most fascinating is the ending:

In fact, even with today’s relative abundance, most people stick to only a few channels.

This doesn’t surprise Barry Schwartz, a Swarthmore professor and author of “The Paradox of Choice.” He fears that people may stick to a small group of selections that don’t challenge any of their assumptions.

“I worry about 250 million separate islands,” he says. Schwartz does concede that when you have millions of options to choose from, you’re more likely to find ones that really appeal to you. But even then, you won’t necessarily be more satisfied.

“Whatever you watch,” he says, “you’ll know that there’s something else on that’s good, and regret you’re not watching it.”

Now, I love Barry Schwartz. I think The Paradox of Choice should be required reading. But how many articles can he appear in over the course of a year? Just two days ago, here he was in the Washington Post, discussing mortgage options:

"You create a kind of paralysis," said Barry Schwartz, professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and author of the 2004 book, "The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less." People find it harder to choose when many options are available, and after they do, they are apt to second-guess themselves, he said.

"It's easy to regret the decisions they've made," Schwartz said. "They think they should have achieved perfection."

It appears that Schwartz has written the perfect book for our times--and that plenty of journalists have been reading and/or hearing about it. Have you read it yet?