A TV In Every home
Television for the Home.
I'm not sure when i stopped believing that.
Don't get me wrong I do have a TV. But aside from video game's or DVD's we don't use it.
Seriously.
No Cable, or Satellite here. I don't even have an exterior antennae.
I don't want one.
While historically it's been a Great innovation
Until 10 years ago my grandparents wouldn't have one in their house. It was "of the devil".
But the truth is, I fear Television, just as sometimes I fear the Internet.
And I fear what we become, with both.
Sounds really weird to hear a blogger say that, doesn't it?
Well let me toss something at you. Tell me what you think.
- "...You can't build a house without wood and nails. If you don't want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one.
Better yet give him none!
Let him forget there is such thing as war. If the government is ineffecient, top heavy, and tax mad, better it be all those things than that people worry over it.
Peace, Montag.
Give the people contests they'll win by remembering the words to more popular songs, or the names of state capitals, or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can, nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won't be measured or equated without making man feel beastial and lonely.
I know. i've tried it; to hell with it.
So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex your heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, string me with Theremin, loudly. I'll think I'm responding to the play, when its only tactile reaction to vibration.
But I don't care.
I just like solid entertainment."
So what does that have to do with anything?
Think about it a moment. When was the last time you heard an honest news report?
A unbiased one?
When was the last time there was something you actually wanted to see at the movies? And how often does it occur?
TV show's?
And how many plots of TV show's are simply rehashed over and over? I mean how many CSI's are there now? 3? Law & Order? 4?
How many reality show's?
I'm not blameless. i do play video games. But I think of them as substitute's for the old board games we used to play. And at least you interact with them versus staring blankly and mindlessly at the "boob tube" for hours. Games at least require you to think as well as do something.
On the same token I'd rather have my child play an X-Box or a Playstation, with my supervision, than watch any program that comes on regular TV programming after 5 pm.
But more importantly, I want her to read.
A Book. Without a remote control. Or a power button. I want her to utilize her imagination, and her mind and learn to educate herself in addition of what she will be taught.
And to think for herself.
I don't want to plop her in front of a TV and pretend that my world is sane.
Folks who do that are not doing their children any justice.
You have a kid
If you wanted something to lay on the floor while you watched the game or sewed then you should have gotten a friggin dog.
- "..I don't know, maybe you would have simply banned the Internet to keep the libraries open."
Lawrence Robinson, movie rendition of Issac Asimov's 'I, Robot'
Is that what will happen one day?
Already we see the begining of it?
Send a resume via Monster.com.
Send 5 if your bored.
See how many E-mails you get back saying "We thank you for time but..."
Digitization has made us callus to our fellow mankind. 15 years ago you would recieve a letter in the mail thanking you for your application. i think I've gotten 4 of those in the last decade. if that.
In the modern age of E-mail, cellphone, TV, cable, broadband, pagers and Insant messenging it has become not only convient to do your job, but convient to forget everyone else but yourself. It has made it easier to block out that which happens around us in the day to day world. because your encircled by exactly what it is that you need to do what you need to do. And nothing else.
Why bother with more?
My best memories are of my town library.
Often i would go and spend hours there. The librarian shaking her head as I would check oput more books than there was boy.
In Elementary school, I won the first Library Award to be given toa student in over 45 years of that schools existence.
An Elementary school award...but that was in 1985. And no one had gotten it for 45 years. What does that say about what we are becoming, and our children as well?
My Father-In-Law is a TV fiend.
Major league.
I can barely tell you what shows are even on TV. Let alone tell you when they come on. Nor do I care.
However he is after us to get Satellite. Cable isn't a option where we live. We're too far out.
I'm refusing thus far.
He thinks we're impeeding my daughters ability to learn by not letting her have PBS.
Ahh PBS. I really want her to watch such upstanding programming there. I mean this is the group that endorses freaking possibly homosexual furry things with flipping televisions in their guts
The world did not come from a Xerox copier. And if it did, that would be pretty boring wouldn't you think?
I get my news via my Radio, which is on more or less 24/7.
Bounce between Classical, Country and Rock.
Classical for when Critter is sleeping.
I use my computer, and I'm not a extremist who says we should stop using them.
I just don't think we should ever allow them to be a substitute for a real book.
I know there are many IT guys and gals who think differently than i do. They want digitized reading. They want the next generation communication system.
I'm more moderate if not a somewhat advanced old fashion person.
And sometime's..I even write a letter.
But, with the obvious lack of insight so many of these protestors have, as has been demonstrated by people like SMASH time and time again. The lack of nowledge, the lack of understanding, they only know what has been fed to them
Just like CaptainBeatty said.
And given a choice, beyond what I have now, there will be no cable or satellite TV in my home, if I can help it.
- "....Do you know why books such as this are so important? because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. Thats my definition anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The medicore ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
"So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the faces of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistery of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers, and fireworks, without completeing the cycle back to reality. "
Professor Faber, Ray Bradbury's 'Farenheit 451