Okay, I'm a bit more simple minded about everything.. but I do believe literacy will never die. As far as I can see, reading and writing still has plenty of people who prefer it, in all sorts of mediums. It's true that technology has dumbed down some of the ways people do things and I see the decline in education with the public schools through my youngest one, forcing me to step in more and more to prepare her for the real world outside of school.. but in the end, its our responsibility to ensure literacy is valid, and that television has it's place, but it's not in the center of the room. I use the television all the time to listen to what goes on in the world, in my area, and to entertain. It's never stopped me from turning it off and listening to new music, reading a new book from my favorite author, or maintaining my necessary tasks in life. I take that responsibility into my own hands to ensure there's a balance in all of it, so I believe it won't be such a crisis if that is the way everyone handles it. I'm sure the T.V. wouldn't harm your home.. mayhap you're just a bit scared of the hold you've seen it have on other people.
Media are an extension of our senses.
The telephone is an extension of our ear, print is an extension of our eye, the wheel is an extension of our foot, clothes are an extension of our skin.
And we create our media then our media create us.
So our print culture of the last 100 years has privileged the eye, but the telephone privileges the ear.
But what is crucially important is that the content of print or the content of the telephone is irrelevant. It is the media itself that changes us.
And at this historic moment we are moving from a print based culture to an electronic based culture.
The content of either culture is merely the bone to distract the watchdog of the mind.
The mind needs to be distracted or anesthetized or numbed because the new medium is performing an operation on us. It is cutting out the literate individual in us and inserting the neo-tribal man - electronic man - the man of the Noosphere.
And this operation would be far too painful if we could feel it.
So do focus on the content and you won't feel a thing.
