Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

 

You might have noticed it's been a few years since I made any entries in this blog. I guess I got a little behind, and then it felt weird to catch up, because I'd missed so many entries. Anyway, I'm going to try to get back into it again, though my entries will likely be more brief than before. 

I read the first half of this, and skimmed the second half. It came out in 1978, which of course was a very different time than now in terms of media. Back then, television really was a dominating force in culture, and the author makes a lot of good points about the unhealthy side of television. 

To this day, as television has changed so much into an overfunded "pick what you like" streaming buffet, I still wonder at the power of film and video as media, and wonder at their future. Watching shows like "Ridiculousness" on MTV, which is all clips of people doing weird or dangerous things, a curated YouTube, I see how prescient that Ray Bradbury was describing similar shows in Fahrenheit 451. 

The author concludes that it is unlikely that we will be able to eliminate television -- but he also reminds everyone that doing so would not be impossible -- we would just have to believe enough in the downsides of it to decide to regulate it. We face the same question today with social media, arguably a more deleterious force that television ever was -- since television's business model requires a certain amount of decorum, and for better and worse, it shies away from too much risk taking. Social media leans the opposite way -- anonymity leads to too much risk taking, and too much cruel communication. Media of all kinds is just the human race talking to itself -- I hope we can find ways to make that communication kind and helpful.