The Amazing Embarrasonic Human Karaoke Machine
In a visionary flash of 1876, a Boston civil servant named George Carey had dreams of complete television systems. Unified viewing across the world. Releasing drawings of what was called a “selenium camera” to “see by electricity” in 1877, the excitement over the possibility of seeing over a distance became widespread. The start of the surveillance dreams began, where fantasies of viewing objects or persons standing or moving in any part of the world could be instantaneously seen anywhere and by anybody.
So, if seeing is believing, we would be believing much more often.
No more scepticism of sound waves.
With this idea of images appealing to sight over the continuing distribution of radios to every home and hostel, the 1920’s brought forth the first images on a TV, sent between American Charles Jenkins and Scotsman John Baird: stick figures and silhouettes. It’s here, however, where I state that this was the first moment where saw a moving picture, a flickering moment of light, and became entranced. It was a drug that was meant to be passed around the circle. Something about the box shape encasing so much inside of its borders, something about the captivation and possibilities of broadcasting, and the magic that could be worked behind the scenes. Everything about this potential industry was looking scrumptious.
So TV proceeded into era upon era, presenting figureheads, the effects of advertisement, an addition to over-whelming hustle and bustle, and a technological (and cultural in some countries) celebration. If you make it here, then you can make it anywhere. But even if television has amassed all of this materialism and vast wealth, I still can’t kick this fact: TV is the worst thing to have ever happened to us.
It’s the box that tells us what society’s standard for appearance is, what should be bought, what is delicious and appetizing. It’s a box that replaces parents, a broadcaster of emotions, hurtful and enlightening. There’s a certain magic that’s worked behind that glass display case of everything imaginable by humans, and I don’t doubt it. Really, scratch what I said before. It’s not that TV is doing all of these terrible things to our brains, so on and so forth, but it’s the people that misuse it who are at fault. All of this encouragement for comfort purchasing? This detachment from reality that it creates (which in some cases isn’t so bad)? This kind of stuff comes from somewhere.
This is why I shake hands with anyone who doesn’t watch the stuff.
Maybe TV was just something in which we were displaying our capabilities, and the fields of possibilities to reap. But hasn’t it gone a bit too far at this point, hasn’t it reached some plateau from which it’s simply looking down on us? There’s more detachment now than there ever was in between the viewers of television, when we eat in silence ‘round the glowing cube, where we can spend hours at a time in front of a box telling us to BUY THINGS more often than we find ourselves entertained. Escape, escaping, a lot of it’s about the escapism. There’s a TV in every home, you don’t have a home without one.
I don’t know. In a complicated conclusion, I’m saying that I’m going to be trying myself to rid my life of television unless it proves meaningful in the next few years. As much it’s premiered to me in the past and shaped the person I am today, I can’t shake that something’s wrong with the Box. There is, realistically, a lot of confliction over the whole subject in my mind. So I drop to my knees, to you and ask.
QUESTION OF THE DAY: What is ‘the Box’ to you?
MEET YOUR MAKER
So, if seeing is believing, we would be believing much more often.
No more scepticism of sound waves.
With this idea of images appealing to sight over the continuing distribution of radios to every home and hostel, the 1920’s brought forth the first images on a TV, sent between American Charles Jenkins and Scotsman John Baird: stick figures and silhouettes. It’s here, however, where I state that this was the first moment where saw a moving picture, a flickering moment of light, and became entranced. It was a drug that was meant to be passed around the circle. Something about the box shape encasing so much inside of its borders, something about the captivation and possibilities of broadcasting, and the magic that could be worked behind the scenes. Everything about this potential industry was looking scrumptious.
So TV proceeded into era upon era, presenting figureheads, the effects of advertisement, an addition to over-whelming hustle and bustle, and a technological (and cultural in some countries) celebration. If you make it here, then you can make it anywhere. But even if television has amassed all of this materialism and vast wealth, I still can’t kick this fact: TV is the worst thing to have ever happened to us.
It’s the box that tells us what society’s standard for appearance is, what should be bought, what is delicious and appetizing. It’s a box that replaces parents, a broadcaster of emotions, hurtful and enlightening. There’s a certain magic that’s worked behind that glass display case of everything imaginable by humans, and I don’t doubt it. Really, scratch what I said before. It’s not that TV is doing all of these terrible things to our brains, so on and so forth, but it’s the people that misuse it who are at fault. All of this encouragement for comfort purchasing? This detachment from reality that it creates (which in some cases isn’t so bad)? This kind of stuff comes from somewhere.
This is why I shake hands with anyone who doesn’t watch the stuff.
Maybe TV was just something in which we were displaying our capabilities, and the fields of possibilities to reap. But hasn’t it gone a bit too far at this point, hasn’t it reached some plateau from which it’s simply looking down on us? There’s more detachment now than there ever was in between the viewers of television, when we eat in silence ‘round the glowing cube, where we can spend hours at a time in front of a box telling us to BUY THINGS more often than we find ourselves entertained. Escape, escaping, a lot of it’s about the escapism. There’s a TV in every home, you don’t have a home without one.
I don’t know. In a complicated conclusion, I’m saying that I’m going to be trying myself to rid my life of television unless it proves meaningful in the next few years. As much it’s premiered to me in the past and shaped the person I am today, I can’t shake that something’s wrong with the Box. There is, realistically, a lot of confliction over the whole subject in my mind. So I drop to my knees, to you and ask.
QUESTION OF THE DAY: What is ‘the Box’ to you?
MEET YOUR MAKER