Four Arguments for the Elimination of TelevisionA total departure from previous writing about television, this book is the first ever to advocate that the medium is not reformable. Its problems are inherent in the technology itself and are so dangerous -- to personal health and sanity, to the environment, and to democratic processes -- that TV ought to be eliminated forever. Weaving personal experiences through meticulous research, the author ranges widely over aspects of television that have rarely been examined and never before joined together, allowing an entirely new, frightening image to emerge. The idea that all technologies are "neutral," benign instruments that can be used well or badly, is thrown open to profound doubt. Speaking of TV reform is, in the words of the author, "as absurd as speaking of the reform of a technology such as guns." |
From inside the book
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... AWARENESS Mediated Environments — tion Environments — IV EXPROPRIATION OF KNOWLEDGE 53 Sensory-Depriva- Rooms inside Rooms 69 Direct Education — Motel Education V ADRIFT IN MENTAL SPACE Science Fiction and Arbitrary Reality 7. CONTENTS.
... reality was in big trouble. As television became the major mental and physical experiential field for most of the people in the country, as it began to merge with environment, the confusion of television information with a wider, direct ...
... reality, individuals began to take personal action to affect it. A young Chicano man hijacked a plane to obtain a five- minute TV interview about the ill treatment of his people. A young man in Sacramento took some bank employees ...
... realities. Johnson was finally done in by his personal style. It turned out to be better television to caricature his way of speaking and his bawdy behavior, to make him a cartoon or folk character than to present him in a favorable ...
... reality; the Hopi mind and its integration with natural forces? Viewers would have had to care about the landscape, the spaces, the time, the wind, the color, the feel of the land and the sacred places and things. How could I have ...
Contents
| 13 | |
| 29 | |
| 39 | |
| 49 | |
IV | 69 |
V | 86 |
Argument | 113 |
THE CENTRALIZATION OF CONTROL | 134 |
HOW TELEVISION DIMS THE MIND | 192 |
XI | 216 |
IMAGES BY TELEVISION | 240 |
INFORMATION LOSS | 263 |
IMAGES DISCONNECTED FROM SOURCE | 283 |
ARTIFICIAL UNUSUALNESS | 299 |
THE PIECES THAT FALL THROUGH | 323 |
Postscript | 345 |