Good luck

“Tell me a story”

Do today’s children find that magic that we were given?
How many children today use those four little words and associate them with something exciting, a gift, a treat, a special belonging something?

“Pass me the remote”
Doesn’t have quite the same ‘ring’ to it.

back then, it could have been bec. the populace was so naive/amazed by such things, that they had no idea how to direct or influence development or uses.

your point about loss of sensory relationship with one another (cant hear tone or timbre or temperament on the internet… although sometimes it seems inferred at least… that is quite so. In the summers I hold ‘front porch storytelling’ nights (on my porch, lol) and old people (like me)… and families and teens and college students and babies and dogs come. Just to laugh out loud with others seems like such good medicine for us all. The dogs laugh too. They do!

I wouldn’t include thoughtful people, inc you, in the ‘couch potato set’ who just swill in whatever production pp at stations pour with pollution into our homes. Just a teeny reference: Since the call 10 years ago from community public radio people, I’ve witnessed the absurd struggle as just ordinary people like you and me, have tried to get low-power radio licenses.

We’re up against people who have money to burn, and well paid lobbyists, and ’special interests’ who want to keep a leg up on top of everyone else… the utter stonewalling ‘those in charge’ at government agencies do, who they really serve, the complicity of the ‘big stations’…

I think the couch potatoes have their share of the flattening of TV’s potential, but also truly significant numbers of people and groups have protested the programming as well as the processes involved… and met utter resistance.

It appears, and this is just my two cents worth, that if we OWNED a network, then we’d have a chance at bringing change.

It might be little chicken-eggie, I am not sure, but it could be a lot of people passively accept crummy TV programming because they have tried to let their desires be known, but have been rebuffed, and think it’s no use trying to get programming to change. Or else they complain at the water cooler or in the truck on the way to the site, and don’t know where else to go or who to join up with in order to press for change.

in psychology, there is a well-documented malaise that comes from feeling one has little or no power.

Community radio, however, is very alive across the country (different than npr) though they struggle for dollars and have nearly all volunteer staff…one of my favorite stations is on the Navajo reservation.

One of the reasons, I think the internet and blogs and YouTube etc, are amazing is not only because they allow any of us to say our piece; but also, I think first of all about Comandante Marcos. The story of his village in Chiapas and even the current horrible state of things in Oaxaca would never have come to us; we’d never have been able to help, if it was all left up to the TV and radio stations in Mex and the US.

I agree, there’s a bunch of trivia and flat boring stuff as on TV/radio. However, I can go to you tube and learn (I just watched a wonderful film of Chinese paper cutting, and another one about blood evidence… ) but there’s little to learn from TV/radio. There, one often has to wait a day or two at least for something scintillating to come along. Those well-crafted programs stand way way out.

Yet, you are on exactly the right track, I think. Community that has that tactile quality is so valuable too. I think we should all have front porch storytelling.

and, ah, I realize this is awfully long, sorry… I’ll stop here, for both our sakes. lol

dr.e

It wasn’t TV (or the governemment) that degraded its content, It was us – that old consumer demand.
I think the same thing is happening with the Internet, the YouTube and all the latest gadgets.

Gadgets and inventions are just things. It’s how we use them that shapes their nature. The same people. us, that contribuited to the ratings (and cloning) of TV shows browse the Internet and read blogs, bringing some things to prominence and dooming others to live on the margins.

When we sat staring at the TV screen, at lwast we sat as families and groups, someimes talking to one another. Now a lot of the talking is done anonymously with strangers while we sit with out gadgets alone.

Things don’t shape our world. We shape our own world by how we use things.
One way we are shaping our new world is to substitue the illusion of community for actual community. Neighbors sitting and talking on a stoop while drinking beer might disagree about politics, but there ia real person to person connection, including the touch of a slap on the shoulder, say.
Now we ignore those around us to talk on the cellphone with an absent someone.

It’s a new world, but whether it liberates us will depend on whther we liberate ourselves and our minds and not on the inventions themselves.