----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 1:54 AM
Subject: [tips] Does television rot your brain?
And things have only gotten better. We now have one of the greatest
technological achievements of humankind, rivaling the invention of sliced
bread and Ben & Jerry's. In the Excited States you call it a Tivo; here
we don't have a name for it (at least nothing catchy that I can remember)
but it's essentially the same. Instead of messing with tape cartridges
and difficulty in locating where on the tape a programme is, recorded
programmes are stored on a generous hard disk, with instant retrieval. We
can record two programmes simultaneously while watching a third recorded
programme. And most remarkably, we can start watching a programme while
the rest of it is still being recorded. There are other miraculous
features.
I realize that this is probably not news to most of you. But if Paul
hasn't had a TV in the house since 1975, he may not be aware of what this
little machine can do in liberating people from their TVs. In our house,
the TV is no longer the boss of us.
Stephen
I'm aware of these devices. However, once the 200 channels exist in
the house the number of possible watchable programs increases dramatically
over what is available on DVD. When you add the fact that a household is
filled with different people with different tastes, the number of programs
that will be watched, and time spent in front of the TV, increases
exponentially. Also, one's criteria for what constitutes a "must see"
program becomes dramatically lower when one does not have to make a special
effort to obtain the program (rent it, buy it, pirate it, etc.). No,
there's absolutely nothing one can do about the TV--again, in my
opinion--other than throw it out.
Anecdotally, that is what my neighbor just did. She is the mother of five
children and now has become a single mother. She noticed how she had been
forced to use the TV to care for her children, allowing them to watch more
or less as they pleased. She also realized that she had to some extent been
doing that already, given her and her husband's work schedule. She threw
the TV out.
Several things then happened. First, her children went crazy. They did not
know how to entertain themselves, create things, read books for longer than
a few moments. They wept repeatedly. The next thing that happened was that
after about two months, these children, whom we basically had not been able
to allow into our homes previously because they just wouldn't listen to
reason, became genuinely calmer, better playmates, started to read, and a
bunch of other positive developments I'm sure nobody will believe had
anything to do with the loss of TV (but I do). Anecdotal stuff, after all.
Regards,
Paul
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