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Introduction


A.N. Whitehead once stated that “The major advances in civilizations are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.” This seems to be quite relevant, and almost directed at the most influential technological advance in our society, television. Television is reshaping every aspect of our social, and personal lives. It seems that every thing has been changed and is being changed by television. Societies have always been shaped more by their means of communication or media, than by nature. Humans find meaning in their modes of communication. Different modes of communication bring different thought process to humans. We must realize and study the implications and effects of our technologies on human kind. Television being the most present and widely viewed media in our lives, seems to be a good place to start analyses.
It seems that every tool, or media is an extension of the human body. With the extension of one human faculty another is overshadowed. The wheel is an extension of the foot, and thus the foot is over shadowed by the wheel, as our main mode of travel. Media or technology changes our relation to our environment, when media changes we change. It seems as though electronic media as an extension of man seems to resemble the extension of our mind, or nervous system. Marshall McLuhans four laws of media states that every technology amplifies part of our culture, and makes an aspect previously amplified obsolete. It seems that amplified electronic media is making written media obsolete. With this disintegration of the written word is coming a change in human thought. With written word as our main mode of communication came reasonable thought, and contemplation. As electronic media becomes our means of communication our thought processes are becoming brash, and irrational. Our consciousness is clearly being changed, and created by our media.

Discussion


Believe it or not before the invention of television there were other inventions that changed our modes of communication. They were the alphabet, and Gutenberg’s printing press. Before print culture man existed in an oral environment. Any hand written communication was still meant to be read aloud. Hand written manuscripts could hardly be mass produced at any substantial rate of speed. Speech was our means of communication.
The invention of the printing press separated writing from speech and made the visual sense of communication dominant over the oral, and spoken sense. The spoken word was dimensioned by the printing press. The invention of the printing press created a huge shift in how information was transferred. It made it possible for society to see what was going in it, and in the world around it. Knowledge came into the hands of the common people. There were more copies of books, and more access to them. Literacy rates increased, as did reading standards.
With the rise of the printed word Oral language, or the spoken word was replaced more and more by the printed word. The world of the printed word had emphasis on logic, sequence, history, objectivity, detachment and discipline. The new world of televisions emphasis is now quite different. Television emphasizes imagery, narrative, present ness, simultaneity, immediate gratification, and quick emotional response. With T.V. there is no longer time for contemplation, like there is while reading. Logical analytical thought was ushered in by reading. A sentence creates a linear thought; it shows a cause and an effect. An action and reaction are fully represented. With television we are often left hanging. There seems to be no need for an explanation, or cause for action. If logical analytical thought was ushered in by reading than logical thought must be being ushered out by television.
As Neil Postman stated “It seems that it was no accident that the age of reason was co-existent with the growth of print culture.” The availability of print technology created a global source of information in which other people’s ideas were better known and available. Ideas were able to be combined, and combined for the benefit of human society. We had a global community of shared knowledge, which led to the industrial age, and many other advances. Now it seems we sill have this global knowledge, but it is quite full trivial useless knowledge. It seems we are in a state of information overload. How can we sort through so much information being thrown at us? We must be picky at what we absorb. It seems it is quite easier to make these judgments while reading, rather than viewing television.
Television has fully ushered back oral communication, and thought processes relevant to it. For television is a combination of visual and spoken communication, it is one of a kind. While written communication can be more precise, it also provides more thought, and comes with a great deal of preparation. Oral communication can be more effective in expressing meaning to an audience. For with oral communication there is usually a visual aspect, unavailable in written or printed word. The effectiveness of oral communication comes from the extensive amount of gestures, signals, intonation, and infliction available. In the oral form a speaker has more control over what the listener while hear, than control a writer has over what a reader will read. This is the distinction between precision and effectiveness. Television with its deadly combination of endless imagery has taken oral communications effectiveness to the next level.
Televisions as a medium of sound and imagery has boundless influence on the human mind. Images are hard to refute, for images and pictures have no context except for proving themselves. There is nothing more to an image than what is there. It seems for humans seeing is believing. On T.V. Less and less attention is placed on dialogue. Images overshadow what is being communicated through words. The image doesn’t have to have anything to do with that is being said, we connect them anyways. News shows are packed with smiling good looking news casters who tell us of war and famine. Commercials selling us unhealthy fast food are filled with clowns, and happy customers. Beautiful women appear in underwear to sell us deodorant. These images have nothing to do with the commercials message. The images are not relevant, but are interesting, and persuasive to our image hungry public.
Television amplifies the present moment, it does not matter what happened before this, this is what is happening now. One topic or images moves quickly to an unrelated other topic, and so do our minds.
It seems we are connecting image, and language into on e form, when in fact they are quite different. For language explains image, or builds image from thought. Our thought processes have become fragmented and short sighted. Our technologies have in fact changed our thought processes, sight and sound have now been combined into one persuasive all consuming medium.
Media limits and shapes the conversations that can be carried out using a specific medium. As Neil Postman stated ”Its hard to talk about philosophy using smoke signals.” What will happen when an entire populations main source of knowing about its self is biased and insufficient? Television has become our main source of public discourse, or our main source of cultural identity.
Television is a severely limited source for many things. It hardly has a broad range of opinions, for about five broadcasting companies own all the stations. Who knows what kind of biases go unseen, and have exterior motives and influences. If you are looking for and open minded, broad source of information T.V. is not the place. Even with this said television remains many if not most peoples primary source for understanding the world around them. It seems people just don’t know any better, and television is so accessible.
Every aspect of human culture is now represented on television, so why does one need to look anywhere else? Whether it be news, religion, music or education it can be found on television. One must understand even though all subjects are on T.V. they are no designed to inform, but to entertain.
Television has failed again and again to fail at any other function but entertainment. Thus television packages everything as entertainment, no matter how serious the subject. The problem with television is not that it provides us with entertaining subject matter, but the problem is all subjects are presented as entertaining