Posted on 06/19/2010 3:03:45 AM PDT by Scanian
There are dangerous trade-offs associated with new media. The influence of television -- popularized in the 1950s and in full swing in the 1960s -- reshaped the political and cultural landscape.
The computer revolution hummed along quietly until the internet and desktop and laptop machines blended in the early 1990s to set off the phenomenon predicted at the advent of television by Canadian academic Marshall McLuhan.
The medium, said McLuhan, would soon be the message, a famous statement that Woody Allen immortalized in the film Annie Hall. Medium Cool, a cult hit film of the 1960s, ensured McLuhan's permanent fame.
...Until now. Mention McLuhan to anyone under 45, and the feedback is a blank stare. We now live in two different worlds, separated by a chasm of unshared experience. Along the way since the onslaught of television and the establishment of the internet, the "generation gap" -- a term coined during the 1960s -- is now permanent.
Television fractured the old world. Information became mingled with entertainment. News coverage became pervasive, while its content became fungible. There was more and more to report, but standards of content selection collapsed to gain audience share.
The political impact of TV was enormous. In the radical salad days of the '60s and '70s, one or two activists demonstrating against a nuclear plant or the Vietnam War were able to use television to create the impression that their cause was shared by millions.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The result is that they can't think and can't write above the level of an average fourth grader, and I'm not exaggerating.
Yup! Young people now act as though they know everything but really they know but little.
It’s amazing what a vast range of improvements can be done to a household when the television is removed or the cable service is discontinued.
The vast majority of books written about the Soviets and the Cold War between WWII and the 1990s were flat out wrong. So were most newspaper accounts of communism. Reader's Digest was a more accurate source of information on the Soviets and their influence in America than most any scholarly work or papers such as the New York Times. The internet is far preferable to the monolithic pro-socialist media America suffered under for over half a century.
Yup! Young people now act as though they know everything but really they know but little.
And when we choose one to be our chief executive we then have taken a serious step backward.
As a young adult myself (I'm 29), I certainly share your pessimism. Looking back though, I think as I've gotten older, I don't watch much television anymore. One girl I dated recently was flabbergasted when I told her I haven't so much as set foot in a movie theater in almost 7 years.
I, for one, do blame public education for much of this brain drain on my generation.
I haven't had TV in my place since the late-90's, and haven't had a regular Internet connection in 5 years. I can't recommend it highly enough. After a few days of feeling you've just GOT to have TV for that one good show, you realize life is so much better without all those things you 'just can't live without' like sports shows, news, and endless net surfing.
I agree. I offered to proofthe senior project of one of the residents where a work, a high school boy. It was in a state I wouldn't accept from a third-grader. When I complained about the poor work, he showed me the previous part of the same project, which got an A--it was even worse than the part I found so awful.
My boss and I recently got into an argument because she decided to pass a kid to the next level of our program even though he clearly didn't deserve it; her argument basically came down to, I'm a conservative but she's a liberal and can't just let this kid fail...though when I pointed out that's precisely what she WAS doing, she didn't even argue. She just did what "felt" right.
Television stalls brain growth.
“Television is a medium. It is neither rare nor well done.”
LLS
The feedback feeds back....
Ah yes. The good old days when content could be completely controlled. I miss those days when the only information you could get about a hobby was in a monthly magazine, in a library, or in one of the rare bookstores. It was great when reporters could completely shape a story. And my favorite thing was that you believed and thought the way everyone you knew thought. Etc.
The TV is a powerful hypnotic jewel, quick to put you in a trance.
The lowest depths of hell... a nice meal, nice conversation and some jamoke turns on ‘the game’.
I enjoy my existence and have no reason to escape it.
The article covers so many ideas, its meaning is muddied: in condemning the internet - does it represent a loss of knowledge, or an improvement on distribution? Surely monks railed against the printing press as representing a ‘loss of knowledge’. How about the transition from handwriting to the typewriter? Or typewriter to word processor?
Then there is his idea of the ‘trained journalist’...one commenter got the sarcasm right ... once all ‘news’ was controlled, and we all thought the same way...(heh). Yep, trained scholars have indoctrinated our kids..but not in the way that we had hoped. Social networking...sure, not private, not controlled...flaws out for all to see...and so on. Marshall was right, but to condemn the ability to evaluate a ‘trained journalist’s’ opinions on a mass scale is to deny the enhancement of the meme. And so on...and so on.
Heh...been there myself, my FRiend.
Guess what...after meeting her, I started to go to the movie theater more. :-)
This statement is nonsense. It was not the one or two radicals who created the impression that their cause was widely supported, but rather it was the monopolistic, leftist, statist media corporations doing so. The internet has diminished the power of the leftists to accomplish this and that is why they're trying to step in and control it more.
You have muddled it, perhaps, by closing your mind. One illustration is your use of "or" instead of "and/or" in this question.
Then there is his idea of the ‘trained journalist’...one commenter got the sarcasm right ... once all ‘news’ was controlled, and we all thought the same way...(heh).
Well, if conservatives remain lazy and untrue to conservative principles, then yes. But the conservative response is to create things--found competition--rather than just be destructive. (Yes, I put my money where my mouth is--I helped start a newspaper...how about you?) Nobody says a trained journalist has to be pushing agenda. Encourage those who boost knowledge. Encourage systems that "incentivise" (promote by understanding the incentives) bettter behaviors. Etc.
Well trained, professional journalists are valuable. Don't let poorly trained, unprofessional journalists cloud the truth.
The lie of "amateur journalism" has been clearly demonstrated throughout the past decade. Even here at FR, the content is rarely self-harvested primary reporting (when it is, it's called a vanity, or an after-action report, or the like). Most of FR relies upon others who have connections and information-gathering skills. For every "Ha! the pajamedia scooped the MSM," there's 500 of the opposite. Many graphics on FR are mooched over stolen bandwidth.
But the bottom line does seem to be the disturbing point that increased distribution and democritization of information means a net loss of knowledge--throughout history. It's similar to the broadening of franchise leading to a less-informed, poorly deciding electorate. Perhaps it's a law of human nature.
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