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The Trajectory of Television: A Big History of the Small Screen.
antdude writes "Ars Technica has a three pages article on the trajectory of TV--starting with a big history of the small screen. From the article: 'Though it's a relatively recent invention, television is a pillar of Western—and even global—culture. Even if you're that one guy who makes it a point to mention that you don't watch or even own a television, your life has inevitably been shaped by the small screen to some degree. Popular culture has its moments of being swept up in the comedies and dramas of the airwaves, and television (cable news in particular) indelibly established in the minds of the world that instant access to breaking news on faraway continents is a normal thing.'"
Same goes for someone who's enjoying a book, gazing at a sunset, or performing any other activity which does require focus but doesn't require any other form of physical feedback. Sure, some people express emotions when reading a book, but so do most people watching TV, unless it's simply not emotive content. If you're simply calling "focusing on something" a drug, you're crazy and have an agenda.
I'm probably one of the older readers/posters here and I'll tell you why I hate TV.
Back when I was a kid, there was no TV.
People and communities were far different.
Everyone knew their neighbours and interacted with them on a daily basis.
We'd have card or board-game evenings on a Tuesday night, whereupon most everyone in the street would roll up at someone's house and enjoy a very social time together, enjoying each other's company and having fun. We kids would play out in the yard (in summer) or inside (in winter), sharing our comics and also playing games.
When Mrs Brown 5 doors down was ill, someone would go mow her lawns every weekend and the women would take turns making sure she had a nutritious meal three times a day.
Most Saturday nights the guy who lived next to us would get out his 16mm film projector and a movie would be screened on his garage door. The adults would all sit around watching and drinking beer -- while we kids also watched or just went and played ball in the yard out back.
Because of this tight bonding between neighbors, those were days when you could leave your car parked in the driveway (or on the road outside your house) with the keys in it and when folk went on vacation, they never bothered to lock their doors -- otherwise the people next door couldn't get in to water the plants while you were away.
Perhaps my glasses of retrospect are rose-tinted, but they were wonderful, carefree, crime-free days where I lived.
Then TV came along.
Once everyone had their own set, people no longer got together and socialised of an evening. Instead, they stayed in their own houses and after a few years (as some folk sold up and others moved in), it quickly became apparent that we didn't even know some of those who lived in the street.
A little later, after a few car-thefts and burglaries, people started locking their cars and doors.
You see, once the fabric of the community was torn by the isolating effect of television, most folk no longer had the close bond that once existed with the others in their neighborhood -- in fact people became anonymous. Once folk are anonymous their inhibitions tend to drop and they're far more likely to submit to temptation (such as theft or other crimes). Just look at how differently many people behave when they're on vacation in a different part of the country and you'll see the proof of that. If the people around you know who you are you tend to be far more conservative and circumspect in your behavior. Go somewhere where nobody knows you and it's easier to behave badly.
Anyway, TV has now become opiate of the masses. Far too many people spend a huge percentage of their life passively sitting in front of the box, soaking up everything that's thrown at them.
If you'd tried to describe why the Kardashians would be celebrities back when I was a kid, people would simply not understand -- and I have to admit, I still don't get it.
The best thing we could do for any nation is to switch off TV and show people that "reality" is a much better option than "reality TV".
Hell, imagine how much better off we'd all be if we spent an hour less each day watching TV and instead, used that time to improve our education, earn a little extra money -- or just spend quality time with our friends and families.
I doubt very much whether *anyone's* last words will ever be "Darn, I wish I'd spent more time watching TV".
But hey, I'm old enough to know I'm wrong more often than I'm right -- so feel free to ignore this rant :-)
VHS tapes were pretty handy back in the day. They had two problems: 1) like other tapes, they tended to jam and become totally useless, and 2) the fidelity was really poor, something like half of NTSC in each dimension which wasn't very good in the first place. So watching a VHS tape wasn't a great viewing experience.
The worst tapes for jamming were the blank ones that could fit 8 hours (160 minutes standard speed) on one tape. The tape was extra thin so more could fit on the spool, and that thinness made it much more prone the jamming up in cheap VCRs (which were basically ALL VCRs manufactured once DVD had gained a foothold). VHS tapes from the studios (movies) were typically very good, and there wasn't a problem with them jamming because they didn't need to fit 8 hours on one tape.
Regardless of the quality issues with VHS, it was such a game changer when it became prolific that I can only look back on it in a positive light. Before that pretty much the only option was watching what was broadcast live, or going to the movie theater. Either way, we did not have any control over what we watched and when. (Yes, I'm ignoring laserdisc or using a film projector at home, because both were read-only, expensive, and only limited titles were available in those formats).
Better known as 318230.
Another generation will think TV was a total US 1950's all electronic patent race.
What about the CRT work of Ferdinand Braun, the Nipkow disk, the 1929 work of Francis Jenkins in the USA?
The work of Telefunken? John Logie Baird? The US/German/UK patent hunt of the 1930's?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Watching TV does not require focus. It is the opposite. Folks who watch TV call it, "zoning out". You cannot zone out while reading a book. And, if you zoned out, staring at a picture of a sunset for 3-5 hours a day, nobody would consider that healthy and normal-- you might even be compelled to seek professional help.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/americans-spend-34-hours-week-watching-tv-nielsen-numbers-article-1.1162285
When I was younger I used to watch a lot of televsion and even look forward to the shows. Nowadays I dont even have a television, I get all my information from the Web. Television is no longer informative, watch a documentary and you'll spend an hour watching repeated film clips and commentary interspersed with maybe 20 minutes of adverts. Much more efficient reading articles on the web for what you are interested in. Television is just light entertainment. Also with the news, each countries news agencies have their own narrow agendas so you never really get the full picture of world events. Much better to visit online news sites of different countries and political views. Then you'll understand much better how things came to be the way they are.
I zone out while reading books all the time. My mind wanders to events of the day or nascent ideas I've been pondering. I often have to skip back several pages to get back into the plot.
Oh did you mean the other kind of zoning out where you are simply not paying attention to anything else as in completely focused and engaged with a single source of stimulation?
If you can't tell I'm calling your conjecture flawed.
TV is just a source of stimulation like any other. It's no bigger waste of time than a board game, running laps, reading a fiction novel or having non-procreative sex. None of these are productive activities and all are purely escapist therapy at best.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
the release of DVD caused a collective groan due to the market confusion it created over whether its 480p was "hi-def" and the delay in HDTV standard that had been in the works since the 80's.
I don't think anyone called 480p "hi-def" (it is technically EDTV). Also, although the Japanese had MUSE/Hi-Vision and the Europeans had HD-MAC back in the 80's, they were both mostly analog HD broadcast systems that never really had a robust consumer media component (I doubt there were more than a hand-full of MUSE encoded HD laserdiscs titles...)
The MPEG standards track (that eventually became the digital HDTV standards) was "in-the-works" in the mid 90's (not the 80's). The MPEG-2 work originally targeted SD and was rushed by Hughes (for satellite tv) and the DVD folks to completion in 1996. Nobody was delaying anything in the standardization meetings as Hughes was clamoring to have the systems layered nailed down before they launched their direct broadcast satellites and the DVD folks wanted to launch products as soon as they could. For example, all the video "scalability" cruft that nobody uses in MPEG-2 were simply a concession to a few hold-outs to get the standard approved ASAP.
There was for a short time, a "MPEG-3" standard proposed targeting for HD after the MPEG-2 work was done, but none of the proposals were significantly better than MPEG-2 coding at HD resolution, so ***rather than delay*** digital HDTV rollout to develop something better, the MPEG-3 standardization effort was simply cancelled and the first digital HD standards were MPEG-2 based (both terrestrial and satellite).
Of course, eventually, the MPEG-4-AVC (aka H.264) was eventually developed (leveraging many of the tricks used by the video conferencing standards 'churn' creating an very complicated standard) and became the current defacto standard for HDTV (except for US terrestrial broadcast which is still MPEG-2 from the 90's)...