Televisions are very important in everyone's lives. Not only do they entertain us, but they also play a big role in informing us about what's going in the world. All the time you see advertisements for televisions going on sale. When you go to electronic stores the TV displays are the ones that attract the most attention in the store. When you go to people's homes, many times their living areas are centered around their television. After noticing all of these things you might ask yourself, "Why do televisions play such a large role in our society?" I think that there are many reasons for this. One reason for this is that TVs can entertain us very easily. All you have to do is click the power button on your remote and you enter a world of entertainment. And every day you see that people are spending more and more time watching television. Television also brings news from around the globe right to your home. In some ways I believe that the television can almost be seen as an evolution of the telegraph. As we learned from Carey’s essay, the telegraph revolutionized communication across long distances. It allowed information and news to be passed along at speeds that were unimaginable. Televisions work in the same way. I can watch live Colombian news from Boston. This is another reason televisions are so important today. This is something that we take for granted and it is in part thanks to inventions like the telegraph that we are able to have such an incredible invention available to us today.
Sources:
1. Carey, James W. "Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph." Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. New York: Routledge, 2009. Print.
Excellent blog Felipe, Bravo! I completely agree that the television has now become the source of entertainment in the household. No longer is conversation sufficient, one must have a 50" television plastered on the wall to entertain company. This revelation speaks volumes about our society, and highlights the stark social contrast between present day and decades past.
ReplyDeleteFelipe I really enjoyed your blog and i would like to echo Kevin's Bravo with a double Bravo. I think that TVs are becoming a center piece for people's houses and they are devoting a large portion of their funds towards the biggest and best TV. I think because TVs have a variety of programs to offer they can appeal to different audience groups. I think the TV has developed a lot since its begining and I also believe that it still has a lot of room for growth.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in the sense that television is certainly creating a brainwashed society. People are glued to their screens. It is happening in such a way that people's contact with others is bcecoming
ReplyDeletemeaningless.
Felipe, you are completely correct in explaining that people live around their televisions. It is the simplest and most entertaining way to watch movies, shows, or the news. All you have to do, like you said, is click the on-button and lay back, relax, and enjoy the show. It is instantaneous and reliable, it is elegant and requires only pressing buttons. television will never go out of style, it will only improve (3D televisions). As far as I can tell, there is no substitute for television besides actually being at a certain place witnessing with your own eyes. But once you get bored of that scene, you won't be able to press a button and teleport somewhere else. In the end, television is better than actually being there.
ReplyDeleteI would definitely agree that TV is a convenient form of entertainment that does not require any effort. It allows us to live vicariously through television characters and be informed about today’s pop and news culture. Television can sometimes act as an escape from reality, but also has the power to defy all geographical boundaries, just as the telegraph did years ago.
ReplyDeleteDaniel, you wrote that television will never go out of style. I have a question for you: what is the boundary between television and the internet? As we gravitate from cable to Hulu on computer monitors (or iPads for that matter), is it still television? The content is there, but it's now able to be time-shifted. How about the Major League Baseball package for the iPhone? You can watch live plays, but also access replays, player stats and a whole bunch more. If this richer multimedia experience isn't television, then television is most definitely going to go out of style. I've definitely had many a night over different friends' houses where we sat around a computer and someone - or all of us - programmed the night's entertainment - on YouTube! Again, as far as television goes, the only way it could not "go out of style" is if you consider internet-based entertainment television. Personally, I think that's a huge stretch, since television is a one-way medium, but I leave that question for you to answer as well.
ReplyDeleteWay to get the communication going, Brianna! Your blog comments are a fine medium themselves!
Nice link between the TV and the telegraph. But it also raised the question of what's so unique about TV among many other technologies which are also the evolved form of telegraph (e.g. newspaper, radio, cellphone, internet,)? This post will become so much more interesting if you show how the long-distance transmission of images is different from long-distance transmission of simple morse codes.
ReplyDeleteGood job overall.
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