It was intriguing to read that when the television first began, there were so many technicalities. I can remember on one of my grandparents old televisions, that they might still have, there was a knob to switch between VHF or UHF and I never knew what that meant until I read about the start of television. But I guess not too much has changed because even today we still have the FCC regulating what can and can’t be viewed on television. However I think we all agree that with every year passing, a line gets pushed, then crossed, and then accepted. I mean I know that there are like billions of lines that have been pushed and crossed just with the cartoon show South Park.
Lots of things change with time of course, like how back in the 1940’s some commentators stated that the expected viewing periods are about an hour or two a day. And today there are millions of people that practically watch television all day long. Another thing was that when they first came out, the television was usually used only by the upper-class status public, but of course that changed within the first 10 years of the start of the televison. The prediction that was made that television were going to only be used by the upper class was made invalid a year later because the middle class public began to also purchase television sets, which brought on these remarks an editor in Business Week “TV is becoming the poor man’s theater” and “Television is the poor man’s latest and most prized luxury.” It’s a little funny how technology theories seem to repeat themselves, like the television and the computer: which were expected to be only used by the rich, but now almost everyone owns one, upper, middle and lower class people.
1 comment:
These readings are always more insightful when you can tie an experience to it like how after reading about the television, you learned what this odd configuration on your grandparents' television meant. Content such as television shows and talk radio is always going to try to test how far they can go because they feel that getting a reaction, whether it be positive or negative, means that their ratings are better. It is kind of sad to see how money plays a huge role in the way that things are presented to us.
As for history continuing to repeat itself with every invention, you would think by now that people would be used to new ideas, but for some reason, they are still afriad of it.
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