The wireless is wired and the phone line is wireless

The Firesign Theatre once said that "Everything you know is wrong."

How right they were about wrong.

Once upon a time TV came through the air on a wireless broadcast signal and our telephones were connected by wires.

Today even those homes that still have traditional home telephone connection most often used "cordless" phones to make calls, and increasingly, there is no "home phone," just a pocket-sized cell phone that uses radio signal to connect with cell phones towers scattered throughout the land.

As for television: well, rare is the home that still has a TV antenna on the roof, pointed at the transmitters of local TV stations. Rarer still is the home with a small V-shaped antenna - 'rabbit ears" - sitting on top of the television where it can be conveniently rotated to get the best reception for each channel. Instead, the TV is probably wired to a "cable box" which is in turn connected to a thick black cable that leads to a wired grid, not unlike the system that brings electricity into our home. If there is no cable box, then the TV may be wired to "satellite tuner" which is also connected to thick black cable that leads outside the home to an antenna pointed to the heavens.This satellite system is sort of wireless, but is totally dependent each TV set being wired to the antenna system. As with cable systems, satellite systems often dictate interior design as furniture is configured based on which wall of the room has wall jack for the cable or satellite connection.

The basic paradigm shift - wired is now wireless and the wireless is wired - is technical change,  but it both a prime example of and prime cause of why the world of information delivery is undergoing its biggest changes since about a century ago, when the first radio transmissions opend the way to radio and television broadcasting that could challenge newspapers, books and other printed media for the public eyes and ears.

Radio didn't kill newspapers, TV didn't kill radio, but now all three are severely wounded and many in their ranks have already died,  more will do so, and those that survive are likely to be puny shells of their once formidable selves.

What to do about it? Truth is, no one knows.

Welcome to life in the fast lane on the information superhighway, where everyone is racing along at top speed with their eyes closed.

How else to explain the chaos that is today's media?

Seemingly no one has an answer to the question of "What do we do now?" They try things based on what might have worked in the past, but the results continue to show that everything they know is wrong.  This is evident in the obvious examples: the newspapers that stop printing, the AM radio stations that stop broadcasting, the broadcast networks that lay off hundreds of journalists who last month were considered essential, but this month no longer affordable, the magazines that magazines now only as thick as junk mail flyers, and so on down the line.