Dear Last Person in America Who Has Been Trying to Watch the Nighttime Olympics Coverage Without Already Knowing the Results:

Give it up. If you have succeeded at all these past two weeks, it has been only by moving to a no-cellphone-reception cave or an Internet-free monastery. The next time the Olympics are held in an un-American time zone, you’ll have no chance. Spoilers won’t even be an issue because we’ll all be receiving real-time results, whether we want them or not, via the iBrain chips implanted in our heads (a mandatory part of the Federal Health Care Reform Act of 2015).

But take heart, you who are still resisting the instant-news tide. You can learn to love this brave new world. A guy in a rumpled trench coat proved it four decades ago.

Before we get to that, it’s worth noting that plenty of people have already made the transition. Millions have been watching NBC’s evening coverage of the London Olympics even though they almost surely heard the major results earlier. How could they not have heard, what with Twitter and text message alerts and all those instant Web updates?

At first blush the popularity of the evening broadcasts seems counterintuitive. Why watch a sporting event — or, really, any kind of competition — when you already know the outcome? What would be the point of “Jeopardy!” or “Dancing With the Stars” or even “Judge Alex,” if the episodes or the season began by revealing the winner?