Friends
I had sent a message a while ago re: tv, but did not
put it in ascii, so it came out scrambled.
Here's my second attempt. Thanks for your
patience.
Because:
1) tv was identified as the "culprit" in Putnam's The
Strange
Disappearence of Civic America
2) I just finished reading Four Arguments for the
Elimination of
Television by Jerry Mander (as recommended by
someone in this
group - and hard to find, I might add)
I'd like to stir up the tv pot a bit.
A quote from Mander's book:
"We believe ourselves to be living in a democracy
because from
time to time we get to vote on candidates for public
office. Yet
our vote for congressperson or president means
very little in the
light of our lack of power over technological
interventions that
affect the nature of our existence more than any
individual
leader has ever done. Without gaining control over
technology,
all notions of democracy are a farce. If we cannot
even think of
abandoning a technology, or thinking of it, affect the
ban, then
we are trapped in a state of passivity and
impotence hardly to be
distinguished from living under a dictatorship.
What is
confusing is that our dictator is not a person.
Though a handful
of people most certainly benefit from and harness
to their
purpose these pervasive technologies, the true
dictators are the
technologies themselves."
What do you all think?
Nan Ottenritter
American Association of Community Colleges
nottenritter@aacc.nche.edu
tv