Next month you'll have your annual opportunity to not read my audiovideo supplement. I don't mind.

I've written an electronics column each month for nearly five years— obviously I'm not discouraged. It's true I don't get phone calls that what I said about bi-amplification had everyone roaring with laughter or that all over town they're repeating my line about pocket calculators. From time to time someone tells me they learned from my column how to clean their records. That's about it.

I don't get much free equipment. In five years I've gotten one needle, a few audio cassettes of varying quality, and every Christmas 3M sends me a box of sample products from scouring pads to Scotch tape. I got a letter from Magnavox asking me if I'd like one of their TV Odyssey games, I wrote back yes please, but they never sent it, so that was probably just a cruel joke. I can borrow equipment to test for a month or two, but I have yet to get something good for nothing.

I don't write the column to endear myself to electronics manufacturers. These guys are convinced there's no such thing as rock and roll. They believe Marshall McLuhan's pitch — please don't squeeze the shaman.

I don't write the column to get rich quick.

What I do is concern my nonreaders with helical scan arid time base correction because someone has to chronicle how tapes arid records are played.

I think records and record players are indistinguishable, only the avenues of manufacture and distribution are different. Let me put it this way : there are moments in human progress when inventions produce visible changes in our behavior. The wheel, moveable type, 45 revolver, light bulb, telephone, and color TV are all inventions of cultural significance. This significance includes the invention as a "medium" and its use as a "message." Particularly interesting is the feedback loop inherent in the use of any medium to convey a message — as the nature of the message changes so does the nature of the medium. In other words, go ahead, squeeze the shaman.

My audio-video supplement will explore what's new in electric toys. Cassette recorders,, video machines, TV projectors, digital watches, CB radios, pong games, home computers and other solid state media will be described, lavishly illustrated, and occasionally recommended.

Electronics often determine our perception of other people. If the steam engine and cotton gin make life different so do the integrated circuit and light emitting diode. That's why I write this column and prepare the supplement. I admit on the one hand that these media are as ephemeral as any other products of our civilization, while thinking that because they rely so much on our physical characteristics to function — our persistence of vision makes TV pictures move — there must be something of us in them.

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My interest began with rock and roll. Rock and roll is the first electric music, it depends as much on integrated circuitry as on players and audience. It's the first time anyone ever needed a wall outlet to make music. From that my interest has expanded to include digital logic and its ability to execute programmed instructions to do everything from reconstructing representations of past events to predicting the structure of future events.

For 20 years electronics have proliferated to accomplish the impossible: a trip to the moon and a $7.95 pocket calculator. It's like Watergate — the nature of the event is determined by the implements that allow it to take placer We're in the midst of an electronics revolution. Electronics haven't changed human nature, but their implementation by humans shows how readily we adapt the medium to a particular human purpose.

I think most people who don't read my supplements do so because they're leary of electronic knowledge or consider it intangible and boring. "As long as it-works, I'm happy," they say, then yawn as I pontificate on frequency response and signal to noise. Okay, I'm happy too, as long as it works. My concern is that as we use electronics we appreciate the full potential and know that when they don't work it's more often our malfunction not theirs.

The only enticement I can offer for next month's supplement is that radio, records, TV, sound at concerts, et al are part of electric rock and deserve your attention. Not because you-care what's inside the box that makes it work, but because the box working is something we've come to depend on.