I recently watched Life off the grid—a film about disconnecting on the public library streaming service Kanopy. It tells the stories of people across Canada, from BC to PEI, who for various reasons and in very diverse ways opted to live off the electricity grid. That meant of course solar panels and small wind turbines, and storage devices, but also adapting all energy consumption to the low-power and small-scale generation of electricity. Necessarily it meant that electricity is no longer something that magically comes out of a couple of little holes in the wall and all you need to know is how to plug something into them and how to flick a switch.

The other day I read this article about an operating system for smart TVs, and I have to confess I was taken by surprise, though I shouldn't have been, by the idea that a TV would need an operating system. Of course it does; it's basically a small computer connected to the internet and attached to a display.

But there's a huge problem with this operating system. It is of course embedded with the TV. It's part of the package; you're not even aware of it. And now it's designed by an advertising giant, whose sole interest is to spy on you and flood you with advertising.

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Then I realized that for once I was way ahead of the game, because I had turned my decidedly not smart TV into one years ago.