If you are old enough, you can remember learning patience, compromise, and how to create alliances and enemies through your control of the television remote control.

You can remember what it means to beg your television partner to stop channel surfing and stay on one program for a bit.

You can remember telling people to wait five minutes for your show to finish before you switch for another show.

You remember having to influence other watchers that your programming choices serve them better.

Have we lost what it means to control the remote?