Ignorance is indeed bliss

I understand the technicalities but the ease of dropping in on other cultures at the touch of screen is truly amazing.
I've just connected my Hi Fi amplifier up to my iPad through a Sonos wireless WiFi piece of gear and am listing, as I type this to a Cuban radio station carried on Tunein Radio. 

The scope of the stations and the type of program seems endless. 
Classical, Folk, Jazz, Opera, stations broadcasting their own cultural music, Talk Shows, Current Affairs , Two man stations in Alice Springs talking about farming, Bolivians talking about a change in the price of Hashish, its a world laid bare in all its complexity.
The Internet of course is the medium for detailing what is going on, what we should see and what we shouldn't. It puts my puritanical old fashioned up bringing, listening to the crackle of Radio Luxembourg, the whistling, in and out signal strength with loads of atmospherics on short wave radio from my faithful companion, the Nordmende Globetrotter portable radio into perspective.
The BBC had 3 program's The Light Program, The Home Service and a Classical Program and that was it. TV was represented by one program, BBC 1 and it went off air at 10.30, 11.00 pm although if you were keen the Test Card was on for another hour. As the program's closed down for the night we listened to 'God Save the Queen', being in your own home you were at liberty to stand or sit depending how much of a royalist you were !
Simple times when effort was required to play a record and you had to actually get out of the chair to turn the record over to play the other side.
Were we happy. Did the simplicity reflect our 'individuality' and being individual we had the space to see ourselves and count our actions as special.
Today we are part collective we all feed from the same trough. We shop at the Supermarket and use the Credit Card to hide our true worth.
We cram the Airports and accept the ignominy of the security search as we proceed on a Package Holiday where everything is pre-paid and resembles being at home.
The TV channels are full of Market Segmented crap repeated at the same time on at least 4 other channel spots as part of a program spectrum,sold as a hundred channels but actually probably twenty showing marginally different shows.
Twenty four hour news which, like a loop is replicated every hour. The editors having decided what we should know repeat and repeat the same old guff whilst real stories, real tragedies are left to be reported on other media.

Perhaps simplicity and with it our ignorance was indeed bliss !!