The End of Television

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Sunday May 23, 2010 · 10:14 AM PDT

2010/05/23 · 10:14

It's been promised since the World Wide Web first became available to the masses via telephone dial-up modems back in 1993.

The days of the very few pushing out information to a massive and passive audience that just eats it and questions nothing are coming to an end.

"Do you know we are ruled by TV?" -- Jim Morrison

American children and adolescents spend 22 to 28 hours per week viewing television, more than any other activity except sleeping. By the age of 70 they will have spent 7 to 10 years of their lives watching TV. -- The Kaiser Family Foundation

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"Everybody’s got values . . . The thing that frightens me is the way that an eroding public school system . . . and television on all over the place is leading to a steady dumbing down of the American public and a corrosion of basic critical thinking in the population." -- Jamie Raskin, Democracy Now!

The TV, the boob tube, the idiot box, whatever you call it - it makes you stupid.

"You watch television to turn your brain off and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on." -- Steve Jobs

I grabbed the above quotes from Turn Off Your TV.com

In the 20th century radio and television technology allowed the mass distribution of information and entertainment for the first time. All one-way and because it went from the few to the many, vast fortunes were made.

In a democracy, this can serve the electorate about issues regarding government and corporations. However, manipulated with propaganda, the concentration of media sources can be a grave threat to democracy.

Leading a mighty bull with a small nose-ring.

Like I said, since the Internet became available to the general public in the early 1990's, it has promised to radically revolutionize mass media and to end the reign of television. Almost 20 years later, television is still here.

But it has been weaken by the home computer drawing away eyeballs and opening up ideas.

It was weaken a bit more with the Internet and the possibility of sharing those ideas.

The promise of killing TV started with a Web TV concept but the available bandwidth was just not there yet.

Now, it is (at least to a large chunk of population).

The days of numbered for television and the downward-directed flow of information from the "TimeWarner-Disney-NewsCorporation" media empires.

Or at least, I can hope.

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