In this article Dreyfuss thinks that TV is our ruination because the images short circuit our ability to ruminate about events. I think he may have a good point. I think that I like the blogs because people here DO ruminate about issues and ideas and they DO come up with some interesting analysis. We get analysis you don’t find on the TV and some you don’t find in print.
There was also an article in the KC Star saying that we spend 9 hours a DAY using the media. They counted where we were multitasking and they counted web use along with the tv.
So how can we take back our lives from TV? Or do we need to? I find that I am drawn more and more to my PC and more and more to the blog community rather than to the flesh and blood community, although I do work outside the home and I do spend time with my grown up daughters. But the pull worries me. Are we losing our ability to connect with each other because we are becoming addicted to various computer/tv/video/you name it pieces of technology? TV has been blamed for autism, although I suspect that cannot be true. But I wonder if we are not creating another kind of autism when we watch tv or videos or get hooked on computer games?
This community is very diverse and has lots of experience embedded within it. What do you all think?
I think most of TV is far below the quality level that we deserve and we should demand. It has for quite some time pandered to the lowest common denominator. Oft quoted, it is said “The American public reads and comprehends at a 4th to 6th grade level.” If that is even possibly true in any of its aspects what are we doing to fix it? Unfortunately that is not the question that is asked, it is rather, how can we help keep them dumbed down and buy, buy, buying what we are selling. TV plays a big role in that equation.
Television could and should be a much more important tool than it is or than we have allowed it to become. Far too many sit in front of the Tube and search channel after channel for something entertaining and interesting to watch. Why is it that so very few of us don’t just turn it off and go read a book, take a walk, go see a play, or a symphony, or, or, or? Nine hours a day of TV, radio, computers or what have you media seems very much too much to me. That is why I, guilty of spending far too much time on blogs and internet myself, have cut back to a more reasonable amount of time.
It is always difficult to keep from using the big broad brush when we talk about some things like this, because we all know or are some of those who don’t fit in the general category.
When I had satellite TV I found it difficult to believe that on 150 channels of choice, there was so often nothing of value to me to watch. Very often there was not anything worth watching.
Basically, we in America are lazy. We want the easy stuff and we want it delivered. Something needs to change or we are lost as a vibrant and productive society.
JMO. . .others may disagree.
I gave up my cable years ago becuase I found myself clicking through trying to find something, ANYTHING, that wasn’t a commercial. I wonder how people still stick with it?