When broadcast television was first invented in the first half of the 20th century, it was quickly heralded as a technological breakthrough that would inspire, educate and uplift human civilization. Educational programs and useful knowledge could be cheaply and efficiently broadcast to people everywhere, it was thought. The FCC even required television stations to run news programming without commercials as a trade-off for being granted broadcast space in the electromagnetic spectrum. This TV news, it was thought, was the broadcast station's obligation to the betterment of society.
Those were the humble and well-intentioned beginnings of television, a game-changing "disruptive" technology that we now know has actually dumbed-down our population while becoming a cesspool for manipulative corporate advertising and idiotic entertainment. Far from enlightening human civilization, television has arguably enslaved it, seductively luring the population into a downward spiral of runaway consumerism, debt, disease and mainstream stupidity.
While educational television programming may still be found through such organizations as Nova, the BBC, The Learning Channel, Discovery and notable others, the bulk of television programming available today is an insult to the potential of human intelligence, and it only contributes to the collapse of meaningful discourse -- a fact that becomes grossly obvious during every political election campaign.
Those were the humble and well-intentioned beginnings of television, a game-changing "disruptive" technology that we now know has actually dumbed-down our population while becoming a cesspool for manipulative corporate advertising and idiotic entertainment. Far from enlightening human civilization, television has arguably enslaved it, seductively luring the population into a downward spiral of runaway consumerism, debt, disease and mainstream stupidity.
While educational television programming may still be found through such organizations as Nova, the BBC, The Learning Channel, Discovery and notable others, the bulk of television programming available today is an insult to the potential of human intelligence, and it only contributes to the collapse of meaningful discourse -- a fact that becomes grossly obvious during every political election campaign.
No comments:
Post a Comment