We can now customize our culture, but at a hidden cost

This is what the historians will probably record: 2005 marked the beginning of the end of serendipity.

We might remember it fondly someday, that experience of glancing at a page of paper, flipping through television channels, unwrapping a new CD, and stumbling on something unexpected. Some tidbit of information. A brilliant song no one was talking about. An episode of ''Arrested Development."

In the future, as 2005 began to prove, we are more likely to live in an entertainment world of our own making. TiVo, long beloved by early adopters, finally seemed to reach the critical masses, and even sparked a change in how ratings are calculated. The ubiquity of iTunes -- singles, cheap and easy -- called into question the future of the album. Link-up sites such as MySpace.com, where every band seems to have its own page, makes the record label start to feel obsolete. (Except that, last month, MySpace announced it was launching a record label of its own.)

The entertainment industry is losing its clout: We're increasingly unwilling to accept someone else's packaging or schedule. We want our songs and our shows when we want them, and only the ones we're asking for, please. We want the news that suits our interests and political views. We want power. We're feeling strong.

And often, our experience is better for it. This was the year, for instance, when Live 8 changed the standard for watching live events. You could watch the 10-city concert through the exasperating filter of MTV VJs, or flip from city to city by yourself on AOL. Yes, you were watching on a small computer screen, but this year, we got accustomed to content writ small: many found that a miniature version of ''Desperate Housewives," delivered via iPod, was well worth $1.99.

It's a decent tradeoff, we've seemed to agree, for control over content and time. But it's possible -- even probable -- that we're losing something more, too. Our choices are more abundant than ever and, especially thanks to the Internet, easier to reach. But it's also easier than ever before to shut things out. And as the water cooler gives way to the personal infotainment bubble, there's a risk that we'll stop talking to one another altogether.

All right; that's hyperbolic. There are chat rooms, after all, and we spent ample time this year online, discussing the cosmic meaning of the numbers on ''Lost." The need for celebrity gossip is still strangely universal, so we followed the saga of Britney's baby, Brad and Jen's divorce, the Brangelina adoptions. We guessed that Nick and Jessica would split, and after multiple denials, we turned out to be right. We confabbed about Tom Cruise's slow retreat from sanity and wondered what those home ultrasounds would do to Katie's baby. We still whined, en masse, about Red Sox personnel disasters, right up to the bitter end of the year.

But certain moments, it's clear, looked different through the prism of choose-your-own culture. Michael Jackson's trial wasn't a matter of life or death, but from a super-trial standpoint, it was the best we had. When the acquittal came, only a smattering of people gathered to watch the verdict -- a paltry showing, when you think back to the O.J. days.

And when Nate Fisher died, a few episodes before the death-filled finale of ''Six Feet Under," a subgroup of viewers howled at the newspapers and websites that opted to share the news. These people were time-shifting, or still wading through season three DVDs; they hadn't watched the episode yet. And they were mad at anybody who ruined the surprise.

In fact, we've gotten increasingly angry at anyone who tries to inconvenience us. This was the year when Blockbuster finally had to accept the ascendancy of Netflix, with its wish-list model of video rentals: In January, the chain eliminated late fees (though the fine print proves it isn't quite that simple). This was the year when TiVo found a way around the networks' trick of shifting shows by a few minutes to muck up the recordings. This was the year when multiplexes felt compelled to tell audiences the precise time movies started -- after commercials were through.

This was the year when consumers started taking their revenge.

That's because the public has so many options now for how its culture gets delivered. The production end is finally struggling to catch up, and the distance is sometimes great. The current model of TV programming, for instance, predates the remote; it was based on the idea that if you liked a show at 8, you might not bother to get up and change the channel.

These days, TV choices are instantly realized and ever-more-abundant; Comcast's on-demand service offers everything from dating to karaoke. The cable industry is taking reluctant steps toward an a la carte pricing system that would allow customers to pay for only the channels they want and to reject everything else.

Radio is headed in a similar direction. Satellite radio has simmered on the margins for years, but 2005 was the year when a talent arms race -- XM just signed Bob Dylan to offset Sirius's contract with Howard Stern -- has drawn increased attention, and added subscribers. Another monthly fee, people seem to be deciding, is worth the benefits of niche programming. Sirius has an entire station dedicated to '80s hair bands. And with no commercials to flip past, you'll never have reason to turn the dial.

But even the ease of skipping commercials, time-saver that it is, deprives us of something, too -- and not just because it upsets the cost structure of just about everything. By blocking ads out altogether, we miss the chance to glimpse a cultural touchstone or a little piece of art. Or to learn about something we might actually want to buy.

In truth, we've always been pretty good at filtering out things we don't like, without special technological aid. And 2005 was no exception. Martha Stewart's post-jail comeback got a lot of press, but it was the viewers who rejected her version of ''The Apprentice." We likewise were quick to tell NBC that ''Joey" wasn't worth the fuss. And so far we're not going to the three-hour ''King Kong" in the numbers expected.

But we're getting fewer and fewer chances to make those decisions en masse. Collective experience is on the wane -- and after this year, we can bid some more of our icons farewell. George Lucas offered us what will likely be the last ''Star Wars" installment; after that '70s-era helmet dropped on Anakin's head, what more closure could we need? Dave Chappelle lost his mind, his spine, or something, and deprived us of the sharpest comedy on TV.

Life during wartime spawned its own subgenre of pop culture offerings: FX's single season of ''Over There," Showtime's ''Sleeper Cell," the movies ''Jarhead" and ''Syriana." But when it came to tracking the actual war, you got a different story, depending where you looked: CNN or Fox, the New York Post or The New York Times, liberal blogs or conservative blogs, Sean Hannity or Al Franken.

If you did happen to look askance in 2005, surfing channels or scanning the radio dial, you came across left-field moments worth cherishing. A glimpse of a very-un-Doogieish Neil Patrick Harris on ''How I Met Your Mother." A blistering piece of musicalagitprop, ''When the President Talks to God," introduced on tour (and on ''The Tonight Show") by Bright Eyes. The way plumes of cigarette smoke provided nostalgia -- and romance -- to the '50s-era newsrooms of George Clooney's ''Good Night, and Good Luck."

It's what Matthew Felling of Washington's Center for Media and Public Affairs refers to as cultural sauntering: strolling through the world with our blinders off. Tuning into someone else's program. Listening to someone else's take.

Serendipity can be a wonderful thing. Hold onto the feeling. You'll miss it someday.

Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com.