At first, they told us what to watch and when.

There were a small number of television networks, and they programmed certain shows at certain times of day. The earliest ones were live, which meant that even if we wanted reruns we couldn’t have them. Television, whose shows are a fancy pretext to keep you in your seat between advertisements, developed a revenue model predicated on scarcity: The show was only going to be on once, so you had to watch it then. The large number of viewers made the airtime very desirable. Advertisers bought advertising and we bought their products.

But like every technology, over time television has become a good deal less scarce. The Betamax Case made it legal to make your own copies of television shows and watch them when you want; the DVR made it trivial to skip commercials; DVDs, iTunes downloads, and streaming (to say nothing of illegal distribution) make us little networks unto ourselves, able to schedule our prime time whenever we want it.

Recently, my girlfriend decided she wanted to watch Mad Men from the beginning. I was excited about the fourth season starting, and she, having never seen an episode, wanted to hop on the bandwagon. So one Saturday morning, I gave her my copies (I have them archived on Betamax. Or something.), handed her the remote, and went upstairs to do some vitally important work on the Internet.

Time passed, as it does on 4chan—sorry, I mean “when you’re doing vitally important work on the internet”—and before I knew it it was the late afternoon, and she had finished most of the first season. I was astonished: Mad Men is a dense and sometimes arduous show. It rewards close, sustained attention, which is difficult to keep up for long periods of time. Or so I thought.