To make clearer my problem with TV--*IT* controls the content, not me. It's
not that there aren't great programs, I just don't really--in real life, not
theoretical terms--get to decide what gets streamed into my house.
My children do get to see programs, but they are on DVD (PBS, BBC, etc.), we
control the transmission and decide when it is all going to end. Having
single DVDs suggests that it ends when the DVD is through. You can say
"Why the hell don't you just turn the set off when the program you want to
watch is finished?" That sounds good on paper, but in a household of adults
and children, where different people have different, often spontaneous
desires regarding programming (and 200 channels beaming in at you), it just
doesn't work out that way in my experience. The TV stays on much longer
than one intends, and material enters your home that you did not invite in
(commercials are only the most glaring, and disgusting, example of this).
Paul
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Okami" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, October 20, 2006 2:14 PM
Subject: [tips] Re: Does television rot your brain?
>
I would not be so impolite as to ask for evidence on such claims. But if
we're dealing with opinions, my opinion is that television is neither
good nor bad but thinking makes it so. And as incomprehensible as that
quote is even to me, I'll explain that I agree that much of TV is a
wasteland, but it also contains much of value. One of my daughters fell
in love with Carl Sagan, for example, while watching his TV programme
"Cosmos" at age five and ended up with a degree in astronomy (insert
standard correlational disclaimer here).
I think my kids would have been disadvantaged growing up without TV, at
least PBS and Canadian stuff like De Grassi, David Suzuki, and Passe
Partout. I wouldn't have minded if they grew up without certain TV--but
when we banned cartoons, they just went over to their friend's house to
watch. I doubt that they were scarred for life by their exposure.
Stephen
I'm not objecting to the television set or its promise, or its
manifestation in one given program or another. I haven't owned a TV since
1975, and my children don't watch TV, but when I watched DVDs of HBOs The
Wire I thought they surpassed by far any English-language crime film I'd
ever seen. So its not the medium I'm worried about but the message, plain
and simple, delivered in commercial television (which includes some
supposedly non-commercial, but in fact, commercial, television).
I think the term "wasteland", suggesting as it does an arena of wasted
time and meaningless escapism does not accurately convey the malevolent
arena that television actually is in terms of its content. Again, my
opinion only.
Come to think of it, the television as medium also has problems, because
it is always available, always streaming and one show leads to another.
It is built to captivate you and keep you sitting there, regardless of
content. However, this aspect of TV isn't much different from the
internet, I suppose, although the internet is at least interactive.
Paul
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