She's an artist, she's a writer, and she's a songstress, and she's got intergalactic style.

Now, imagine that the NFL just announced it would stop televising games every Sunday. Instead, they would record the whole season and drop it online, all at once. You could binge-watch from the first kickoff, you could skip to the playoffs, you could Tweet about the Super Bowl whenever you wanted. Go nuts!

Would this be a better experience for watching football? Probably not.

Is this comparable to Netflix's new show, House of Cards, which was dumped online in its entirety last week? Maybe, maybe not.

But the modern media person, trying to describe this show's idiosyncratic release, is forced to create crazy hypothetical analogies like this. Whether the show is good or not seems almost secondary to its oracular potential: Is this the future of video?

Perhaps. But first, some other gnarly questions:

Is this a web show or cable television?

Hm! Well, the show is certainly closer to HBO than YouTube, but you can't watch it via the cable box in your house.

It also seems mildly paradoxical that you can't get a DVD version of the show through Netflix. That should tell you something about the future of DVDs.

Does putting it on Netflix make it a different kind of show?

None of this chatter about how we get video would matter except that new platforms are actually changing the content.

At first glance House of Cards might look like an HBO show, but the experience of watching it is different than watching a season of The Sopranos. The show's pace seems to be designed for binging; the finale, as inconclusive as a webisode.

It literally feels like a new form of video. It's exciting in a way that watching Balzac and Flaubert create the realist novel probably felt.

What's the best way to watch a show like this? Should you binge on it?

That's like asking what's the best way to read Ulysses. You can watch it however you want!

So why is everyone making literary allusions to describe television lately?

Like who?

Okay, it seems like some messy combination of the DVR and YouTube and Netflix and HBO and HDTVs are disrupting the kinds of shows that are now getting made. Somewhere between Knight Rider and House of Cards, things changed. Sitting down to watch a season of The Wire is more reminiscent of reading The Odyssey than of watching The Jeffersons.

And we seem to discuss television shows in a way similar to how novels were discussed in the 20th century.

Isn't the internet driving that discussion?

#OhYeah

Without a doubt, Twitter has become intricately tied to the television experience.

But just as interestingly, an entire class of writer — the TV recapper — has emerged. If you go online the day after a new episode of Breaking Bad was on, it's impossible to avoid dozens of recaps.

It's like there's an entire new class of person out there now; let's call them the TV Recappers Union 237.

But doesn't House of Cards resist online conversation?

Strangely, yes, it does. You won't find many show recaps online, presumably because we're not watching it "together." Dropping it all online at once disrupted the ways we can talk about the show. The New York Times even penned an etiquette guide for discussing the show.

Or to make yet another literary analogy, when was the last time you saw someone live-tweet a novel?

But as long as you're in the mood for reflection, take a look at these videos from 1967 in which Walter Cronkite tries to predict what the living room, kitchen, and, most peculiarly, home office of the 21st century will look like.

"In the home of the future, we may not have to go to work; the work would come to us. In the 21st century, it may be that no home will be complete without a computerized communications console."

Maybe.

And as the calculus of the web has taught you, time and time again, amazing = sharable.

Your friends will love this video.

You are a master of discovery, they will say. You are a cultural connoisseur, a curator of viral video delight.

But wait.

You usually trust your instincts, and you rarely pause for reflection, but today, for the first time, you wonder, should I really share this with my friends?

This is a complex question. But it is a solvable dilemma. This how-to guide will help you solve this quandary. You just need to ask yourself a few quick questions….

First, look at the view count. In prominent 19-point type, YouTube tells you how many people have seen the video. If it has over 10,000 views, you should think twice about sharing this video with your friends. If it's over a million, you should only share it with your cousins back home.

Next, look at the date. Was the video created today? Yesterday? This week? If it's any longer than that, you should certainly not share this video.

Now check out the comments. Has someone already composed a witty rejoinder more clever than the witty rejoinder you had planned to share with friends? That's not good. Being clever is crucial to sharability, so you should reconsider sharing this video with your friends.

We're almost done. But take a quick glance at the Likes. Is there a high proportion of Likes to Dislikes on this video? If the masses seem to dislike it, then you probably should not share this video. (Unless of course it's Rebecca Black. Haha, it's funny to share bad things!)

You've made it this far, but you have one more step. Do a quick Google search. Has Gawker Media already written about this video? How about BuzzFeed? HuffPo? Break? If the answer to any of these is yes, you should not share this video with your friends.

In conclusion, you should probably not share the above music video where five people play guitar simultaneously. Unless you're the kind of person who likes to break all the rules.

"On the bright side," he said, "someone needs to make the robots."

"On the down side," I thought, "I'm learning history from a robot-fearing xenophobe."

If you're old enough to remember Michael Keaton in Gung Ho, you probably recall this brief period in American pop consciousness in which Japanese robotics were nearly as scary as Russian nukes. That fear subsided with the onset of crippling Japanese recession, but a new genre of robotic paranoia has resurfaced in recent years.

If you saw 60 Minutes on Sunday (you didn't; you were watching either an NFL playoff game, the Golden Globes, or the season premiere of Girls), then the story "Are Robots Hurting Job Growth?" probably jumped out at you like Gaius Baltar fleeing a cyclon.

To be fair, 60 Minutes' take is nuanced, at times suggesting that robots might actually bring back manufacturing jobs to America, though in fewer numbers than left. But all I could hear was my jingoistic history teacher in my ear, replacing every instance of "Japan" with "China."

I suggest watching for yourself to see if the hysteria is warranted, but be certain of this: Robots are having a moment!

Just peek at the newsstand right now, with this month's issue of Wired beaming a cover that declares "The Robots Take Over".

I personally wasn't worried by any of this until the clip of robots performing "Ace of Spades" (embedded above) went viral a couple weeks ago.

If robots can proficiently play Motorhead, then my high school teacher was right. We are doomed.

And then come back and watch this clip of Lindsay Lohan in The Canyons.

Until a few months ago, I had never subscribed to a YouTube Channel. The value never occurred to me.

But because launching this site forced the concept onto me, I'm now subscribed to a couple dozen channels. Most of them suck. But a handful are magical.

Take the "video" above, Howard Stern interviewing Quentin Tarantino, uploaded by user M076n7. I have no idea the identity of user M076n7, but it's some wonderful human being out there who uploads all the big Howard Stern interviews. I don't have SiriusXM Radio (another value proposition lost on me), so it's practically miraculous to have these interview clips just show up in my YouTube subscription queue.

Recently, I've devoured interviews with Bradley Cooper, Kid Rock, Chelsea Handler, Mark Wahlberg, and Alec Baldwin.

The idea of "subscribing" to channels on YouTube still seems foreign to most people, even people who frequently do the same type of action with their DVR or RSS reader. I don't know why that is exactly, but it seems to have something to do with not thinking of YouTube content as episodic in the same way as, say, a favorite blog or tv show. And the paradox is that despite the millions spend on original programming, the best stuff on YouTube is oftentimes not made for YouTube.

Or in this case, it's not even video.

By which I mean, thinking you can pull off a Subterranean Homesick Blues-style video with a webcam and a Green Day soundtrack.

But also, robbing a bank and bragging about it on YouTube.

In a video titled "Chick Bank robber", 19-year-old Hannah Sabata (username: Jellee Beanie) brags about stealing a Pontiac Grand Am and robbing a small bank in rural Nebraska. She flashes her loot — over $6k — atop the words "I just stole a car and robbed a bank. Now I'm rich, I can pay off my college financial aid and tomorrow i'm going for a shopping spree. Bite me. I love GREENDAY!"

Of course, she was arrested.

"Basket Case" would clearly have been a better song choice.

John Quincy Adams had silkworks and an alligator; James Buchanan had an eagle; Nixon had a few dogs, including of course Checkers the cocker spaniel; and Teddy Roosevelt had a one-legged rooster, a macaw, a badger, a rat, some guinea pigs, a garter snake, and a bunch of dogs. Apparently no president was pet-less.

I suddenly believe in American exceptionalism.

Questions include:

• Name three movie star crushes you had either as a kid or as an adult.
• If you were a friend of Woody Allen, what would you say is the most annoying thing about Woody Allen?
• Name a film that you always have to defend liking and a film that you always have to defend not liking.
• If you could never watch another movie again or never see a sporting event again for the rest of your life, which would you sacrifice?
• What's the hardest thing you've ever had to give up for health reasons?
• Name one thing you did as a kid that you'd be furious to learn that your kids did.

• Why aren't there more stunt pranks like this?
• OMFG, I hope there won't be more stunt pranks like this!
• That little girl is lucky no one punched her.
• Why are Brazilians so cruel?

Hot Chip's "Don't Deny Your Heart" has all of them!

The bad tech encountered on Charlie's site, a bluster of broken pages and video players that spin spin spin, is one of our greater new media paradoxes, because if we invented Charlie Rose today, it would most surely be a web show. With the minimalist set, the low-production camera work, and a theme song straight out of an '80s sitcom, it's practically Between Two Ferns.

[We interrupt this message to bring you Danzig's "Mother," the best music video involving a satanic chicken slaughter of all time.]

Anyway, back at the roundtable, we have seated around the sphere Tim O'Reilly, Jane Friedman, Jonathan Safran Foer, Ken Auletta, and David Kastan. They turn in one of the better discussions about the future of the written word since at least Glenn Danzig gave a tour of his bookshelf.

No one has ever said "Charlie Rose asks the hard-hitting questions," but that never seemed the agenda. He just sets the table for a good discussion, here about whether printed books will survive the digital revolution and how the book industry must change.

It's almost as good as the time that Charlie interviewed Charlie.

At this point in the history of The Internet Takes Over Everything, apps are winning. Everything that was once physical or in a browser now seems better as a mobile app. Board games? Hello, Zynga. Music? Whatup, Spotify. Photo albums? Yo, Instagram. Maps? Heya, Google Maps.

But video, it seems, is an area where apps have yet to claim a significant win. One could argue that video is still best experienced on a television or computer screen.

Several new apps are challenging that idea. One of the newest and most interesting is NowThis News — that's a link to the website, but the iPhone app is what they want you to use.

NowThis News is essentially the first broadcast news system made expressly for a mobile device.

The format is unique — at times, it might remind you of everything from Best Week Ever to Current TV. One executive called it "MTV meets Daily Show meets CNN," which, okay sure, that works. (The management pedigree includes people from HuffPo, Buzzfeed, and CNN, if that helps.)

The pieces are clever and short. Yesterday had a recap of the Guy Fieri Flavor Town flap and today there's a bit about Joe Biden's cameo on Parks & Rec.

It's decent stuff, but what makes it particularly mobile? It's hard to say. Watching video on your phone might become as commonplace as checking email or looking at friend's pictures, but right now it still feels a little clunky.

Almost as clunky as a newsletter about video.