> Thinly veiled 'I despise stupid people', this one.
Are you talking about this comic (i.e. a few sentences from the book) or the whole book?
I read the book a few years back and it's entirely focused on culture as a whole and less about the individual choices. He's not making a point of "television makes you dumb" (or "dumb people watches television"), but rather he makes the distinction between an "oral"-, "press"- and "television"-based culture. He claims that it's bad when television becomes the main platform that a society centers its communication around.
He's also honest that there's probably far more junk (in absolute terms) in printing than in television: "Television is not old enough to have matched printing's output of junk." It's not about the amount of "junk" – it's about something more fundamental about the medium.
I found the book quite interesting and would highly recommend reading it!
> They'd be boozing (more than they already are) if there wasn't such variety of cheap and available entertainment, the author doesn't seem to realize?
That's an extremely pessimistic view of the world: Categorizing a set of human beings as "stupid" and saying that it doesn't matter how society is structured?
And "smart people" are also influenced by how our society is structured, no?
Are you talking about this comic (i.e. a few sentences from the book) or the whole book?
I read the book a few years back and it's entirely focused on culture as a whole and less about the individual choices. He's not making a point of "television makes you dumb" (or "dumb people watches television"), but rather he makes the distinction between an "oral"-, "press"- and "television"-based culture. He claims that it's bad when television becomes the main platform that a society centers its communication around.
He's also honest that there's probably far more junk (in absolute terms) in printing than in television: "Television is not old enough to have matched printing's output of junk." It's not about the amount of "junk" – it's about something more fundamental about the medium.
I found the book quite interesting and would highly recommend reading it!
> They'd be boozing (more than they already are) if there wasn't such variety of cheap and available entertainment, the author doesn't seem to realize?
That's an extremely pessimistic view of the world: Categorizing a set of human beings as "stupid" and saying that it doesn't matter how society is structured?
And "smart people" are also influenced by how our society is structured, no?