A Venetian objecting
to Gutenberg's printing press.
Quoted by Daniel Boorstin in The Discovers

10. Chapter - Embracing the Future: Television

            U ntil recently societies changed slowly, but with the advent of electronic media social change accelerates. Women's liberation begins as individual idea and becomes collective practice fifteen years later. The voting age is reduced to eighteen. Hippies and drop outs, graffiti artists and rock stars spring from nowhere. Generation gaps widen. Terrorism flourishes. Crime soars. New visions overwhelm us.
            It is more than coincidental television accompanies today's turmoil. Marshall McLuhan, poet laureate of the electronic age, said the medium is the message, but attributing social change to an invention misses the point. The medium is not the message. It is the messenger for other human minds.
            Comparing print with television is instructive. Both exert the same influence, the difference being the time it took to write, distribute, and read books. Generations passed before literacy became sufficiently widespread for printed ideas to change enough minds to make a difference.
            Television traffics in ideas, but it purveys information at the speed of light, and literacy is unnecessary. Television's images dismay those raised on written words. Reality as flickering image undermines our perception of a fixed, objective reality. Television's implications are enormous, but we resist the obvious because change unsettles. Literacy, pride of nations, turns passe. In schools students, reluctant to read, turn on teachers with increasing violence. Under these new circumstances, educators proceed with business not quite as usual and pretend nothing is happening. Non-verbal communication spreads from rock music to common usage, offending older ears as grunts replace syntax, but if the purpose of language is communication, it should not matter how we convey our messages. Groans communicate despair better than prose, but they lack the linguistic elegance preferred by older ears.
            Television replaces print media and we see a decrease in the number of newspapers and mergers of those that remain. These new events discourage some of us, but to mourn the passing of literacy is to mourn the passage of time. Printing presses made language permanent and portable, but printed words are meaningless to those who cannot read. One need only understand the language to be influenced by television. We saw literate nations as superior to illiterate nations, a judgment to which we added the superiority of technology. The world envied public education in the United States, and literacy became a source of national (collective) pride. We debated usage, form being more important than substance. In the process we created detailed, ambiguous languages.
            We see language as a reason humans are superior to animals, but literacy creates dependence. It deals in the second hand, its versions of events turning on the observer's interpretations. Television lacking literacy's disadvantages, drives it from the marketplace. Those raised to read, see the diminished importance of printed words as a staggering loss. They despair of a world where Shakespeare, like Homer, turns irrelevant.
            Every age see its inventions as steps in the wrong direction, but television's benefits are so obvious objection should cease. Television shows us events as they happen and allows us to draw our own conclusions. To see the decline of literacy as loss is to prefer reading about things to seeing them for yourself. The day will come when literacy, like Latin, belongs only to classical scholars.
            Literacy's words and television's images disseminate knowledge, but literacy creates hierarchical relationships. People who read more purportedly know more, it being an article of literacy's faith that reading books enhances one's worth. These knowledge differentials, not economic class, are the real foundation of hierarchy. Rich people are smarter than poor people. They outwitted the foolish. We say 'knowledge is power' and mean ideas change minds and motivate actions. Governments know the value of knowledge, spending enormous sums to gather intelligence at the same time they try to keep other nations from gathering information about them. Men who run governments classify information. They want constituents to think themselves too ignorant to participate in collective decisions.
            Ronald Reagan believed the war in Vietnam would not have been so violently opposed had it not been televised and he saw to it excursions to Granada and Nicaragua received little television coverage. Television destabilizes because televised events become common knowledge. Before television, people in one region knew little about other regions. Television introduces country cousin to city cousin. Purveyors of consumer goods use television's awesome power to sell their products. We are advised to move up to Pontiac as the screen displays images of the happiness, excitement and respect that will be ours provided we make the right consumer choice. A commercial provides glimpses of what awaits vacationers in Jamaica. Waterfalls, beaches, and golf courses flit before our eyes in a thirty second tour of the island, as edifying as hours with a guide book. Vacationers learn what is available while those unable to afford such wonders learn what they miss. Television exposes viewers to possibilities outside their society and destroys claims to obedience based on superior knowledge. Leader and follower, watching television, see the same things at the same time.
            We blame television for moral decay. Prime time hours, absorbed with cops and robbers, supposedly inspire crime. Television does not promote the loving and well adjusted because advertisers believe peace and harmony do not sell detergents. Few things are more researched than viewer preference, and in a business where ratings measure success, violence prevails because violence is popular. To the extent broadcasters accommodate us, we watch what we want to watch. In one sense television creates unrest by creating dissatisfaction. It persuades slum dwellers they will overcome, a state of mind opposed to docile acceptance of one's lot. Television provokes impatience with the rate of social change and legitimizes murderous instincts because it shows us cities drenched in violent, destructive crime. Other viewers enlarge on these violent themes. Television's capacity for edification exposes the darker recesses of the human soul. If we do not like what we see, it is up to us to change. Television reveals who we are.
            If television breeds violence, it also ends it. It stopped the Vietnam war, and marked a watershed in collective relationships. Never before was authority so repudiated and never was a nation so involved in foreign policy. Riots occurred in every living room, exposing the national unease. Wars engender dissent, but we are accustomed to dissent gaining adherents slowly. Television accelerates the process. We saw Americans killed. We saw Vietnamese suffering, and could not avoid responsibility for what was done in our name. Brightly-painted hippies sprinkled among Vietnam War protesters startled older viewers, but solemn citizens nearby, proved that opposition to the war ran deeper than the frivolous young. Television can be manipulated. People perform outlandish acts to appear on the evening news, but men who hijack airplanes convey their discontent no matter how the incident is resolved. Television changed gender roles. Angry women complained and other women discovered they were not alone. Millions of consciousnesses were raised at the speed of light. The equal rights amendment was not ratified because some women are not as ready for change as others, but a constitutional amendment coming so close, so quickly, shows how far television has taken us.
            Television is perceived as a wasteland by elitists who claim it neither edifies nor instructs. They do not see elitism as debasing or their distinctions between good and bad as fear of diversity. Elitists prefer symphonies to rock concerts, documentaries to sit-coms. Before television their opinions mattered. Now no one cares. A college roommate believed people who do not appreciate Bach do not appreciate music. He played the B minor mass constantly, something I hope benefited him more than it did me. I felt the same about martinis. A man I considered an authority on white Anglo-Saxon Protestant refinement, something to which I aspired in those days, told me a taste for martinis marks the truly civilized. I persisted in my effort to reach that state of grace, and was duly rewarded when martinis became a major pleasure. Having seen the light, I tried to dispel ignorance everywhere. To those who disliked martinis, I counseled persistence, predicting the promised land would overtake them as it had me. I saw myself as purveyor of the good life, not overbearing and foolish. Like everyone who sees the light, I, proselytizer of the eternal martini, thought I dealt in absolute truth. I no longer drink alcohol. So much for absolute truth.
            Television creates a mass culture, and it is indicative of collective self contempt that we see mass amusements as inferior. The mass, happily watching a variety of programs, ignores criticism from the cultured few because television transforms differences of kind into differences of opinion. Viewers develop the confidence to watch what they like. They are no longer alone, and the knowledge others agree generates the assurance to reject intellectuals pushing Bach or martinis. Television reveals the collective mind by informing us of other tastes. Some say Shakespeare is better than Norman Lear as if spouting transcendental truth, but statements of greater or lesser have no basis in objective truth. The world is large enough for Shakespeare and Norman Lear, each to be enjoyed as the spirit moves.
            Those who criticize television as uncreative do not appreciate the number of people it involves in creativity. To fill its schedules, thousands become artists and writers or actors and actresses. Before television, creative employments were fewer and we have only begun as cable television provokes new bursts of creativity. In no other time have more composers composed, more artists painted or more writers written. We should welcome television's promise. Before television, obscure Georgia governors remained obscure, but television puts national recognition within every reach. Television changed political conventions and brought the nominating process to individual voters. Gone are favorite son candidates and carefully orchestrated spontaneous demonstrations. Television reveals politics as show business, subject to every show business cliché. Wise politicians leave us laughing and know the show must go on. Interminable delay, common in pre-television conventions, plays badly in Peoria.
            Television's critics deplore the marriage of politics and show business. They say talented non-charismatic individuals lose, while vapid, telegenic knaves prosper. They see image replacing reality, but the change they lament promotes a less hypocritical way of transacting political business. Reality is a collage of shifting images and images are television's forte. We have played roles since pulling ourselves up from the muck. Every day changes us. In that television accustoms us to change, it brings reality closer. We resist a perception of changing truth, preferring eternal knowledge, but reality does not accommodate us. Women, once relegated to hearth and home, vie in marketplaces as men, weary of marketplaces, try hearth and home. Television pushes our faces in change as it shows us what is happening. It publicizes people who march to different drummers. It alters world views. More important, it alters our view of ourselves. Television worked monumental change while remaining comparatively superficial. Perceived primarily as entertainment, we are not of a mind to use it to instigate social transformation. We prefer sound bites to substantive discussion. Political image and reality diverge because thirty seconds do not capture candidates. Money exacerbates political problems because politicians, like the rest of us, need it. Need makes cheaters of us all.
            Profit-motivated television networks have no time for local candidates or meetings of state and local governments. Since information is limited, we vote for candidates who are worse than they look, but perceptions of candidates at factory gates or on whistle stopping trains are no more valid than images on a tube. If politics is to mature into something other than popularity contests, debate is required and candidates cannot make the rules. Formats, times and places are too important to leave to the self interest of those running for office.
            We rely on political campaigns, relics of literacy, for collective decisions, and pay the price of riots by those who claim the system does not work. Were governing agencies televised, we would see present and future candidates in action. Speedier legislative procedures will replace present practice because viewers will not tolerate time wasting quorum calls and speeches to empty auditoriums. Legislators excuse the dearth of floor activity by saying they work behind scenes. Television will prove, if proof is needed, that legislative deliberations leave something to be desired. Our founding fathers, knowing democracy needs an informed electorate, committed themselves to the unobstructed flow of printed and spoken words. Were the American revolution to occur today, our Constitution would mandate televised Congressional sessions and citizen involvement in collective decision making.
            When the Constitution was ratified, federal concerns were small, but as government grows, so does the citizens' need for information. When Congress promotes affirmative action, nuclear energy, domestic intelligence, and destabilization of foreign governments, informed citizen consent is required if democracy is to remain valid. It is a measure of our departure from democratic ideals, that we do not protest the absence of Congressional television coverage. Cable networks or satellite systems capable of carrying every congressional doing can be installed quickly, but we delay because neither congressman nor citizen wants to change the way things are. In 1968 I ran for the Connecticut legislature, an experience I commend to anyone interested in government. I was nominated because the Democrats needed a body to run in a safely Republican district. They did not care who it was or what it said on the way to defeat.
            My years on the Board of Finance made me doubt the efficacy of representative democracy, and mistakenly believing everyone shared my concern, I addressed the problem in a one plank platform. I suggested a moratorium on legislation until we installed a statewide electronic voting capability. I said electronic participatory democracy would cure public ills at every level. I envisioned televised zoning and board of finance hearings after which the community at large approves or rejects proposals. I saw legislatures, not as instruments of public power, but as focuses for debate. In electronic democracies decision making resides in the electorate, who watch and vote from home. I did not think the proposal the stuff of victory in my Republican stronghold, but I thought it sufficiently imaginative to put me ahead of the party line. I wagered dinner for two I'd run one hundred votes ahead of candidates for justice of the peace, measure of the party line.
            The late Stewart McKinney, my Republican opponent, the incumbent state legislator who later moved on to Congress, agreed to a debate. I wrote every church and public organization in the district, but none wanted to hear our views. Our one encounter occurred at my sister-in-law's house before an audience of ten, all aligned with one side or the other. No non-political citizen attended although I tried, going so far as to provide decent refreshments, to draw a crowd.Later, after asking myself if I would attend had I not been a candidate, I knew why no one came. As it was, the debate was a failure. My friends thought my proposal strange and undesirable. They were not inclined to trust that awful mass with political power.
            I campaigned door to door, leaving literature with anyone who took it. According to conventional political wisdom, the more hands you shake, the better your chance, but I chose quality over quantity. At one memorable stop I waited with a wife for her commuter husband. When he arrived we discussed affairs of town and state over cocktails. I left hoping they liked me as much as I liked them, but I knew they would not vote for me, any more than I vote for Republicans who knock on my door. I ran more than one hundred votes behind the justices of the peace. I would have done better had I waged no campaign at all.
            It rankled that I was so wrong, but agonizing over that miscalculation provided the beginnings of theory. We say we get the government we deserve, but reality is harsher. We get the government we want, and politicians who ignore this simple psychological fact are doomed. I proposed participatory democracy to the elite. I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time with the wrong idea. My foolishness depressed me as did the election process. There was no time to explore issues. No time for questions or explanations, and no interest in any of it. Voters want public services and low taxes. They elect purveyors of that impossible dream. They want candidates with answers, candidates they can blame when nothing changes.
            Before my run for the legislature, I had held local office for four years. If Finance Board meetings had been televised, my views, and the views of others, would be more widely known. Knowing collective business helps, but it is unrealistic to expect everyone to watch every public meeting. Our small town has police, fire, and recreation commissions, a library board, a board of finance, a representative town meeting, a board of selectmen, a planning and zoning commission, a zoning board of appeals, and, of course, a board of education. Each political party has a town committee and each town committee has district leaders. All hold monthly meetings. Public business is plentiful and ongoing, but we need not forego sit-coms for civic duty. It is enough that some watch and discuss what they see with others. Many will find public business more interesting than prime time fare.
            Congressional hearings draw large audiences, the drama unfolding on those stages rivaling any soap opera. Expanding television capability is the key, but the present system opposes diversity. Networks, whose revenues depend on market shares, will not welcome plentiful viewer choices, and advertisers will not pay premiums for audiences watching politics on public cable systems. Television licensees will not welcome competition, but wiring the country for cable television steps towards solving collective problems. It makes it possible to teach one state's solutions to citizens of other states. In the process we discover someone ripe for higher office.The objection to public sector television is that legislative sessions will play to a void, but my years on the Board of Finance were interesting. Bureaucracies generate mountains of information, but information will not interest people afraid to take responsibility for collective activity. We prefer that others make collective decisions. Pervasive problems may force us to change our ways.
            Governments need not get very large before public concerns overwhelm legislators. To handle large volumes of information, they form committees to explore numerous legislative proposals. They rely on committee recommendations, the theory being committee members know more. Legislators respond to knowledge differentials like the rest of us, but when it comes to how we want to live, we are the experts. Public works departments count boats, but deciding whether or not to build a marina depends on what we want for our community. Defense officials claim national security requires laser beams and particle rays, but our need for Star Wars is one man's prediction of things to come. In that area defense consultants have no greater expertise than the rest of us. Stockpiling nerve gas depends on how you feel about nerve gas, and to that decision legislators and bureaucrats bring no special wisdom. Everyone is competent to deal in public matters, but we fear responsibility and fear generates the insecurity that inspires us to attribute wisdom to leaders.
            Individually we object to being told how to live, who to marry, or what occupation to pursue. We know our individual selves, but see the collective enterprise differently. That we abdicate so large a measure of control over our lives speaks volumes about us. Technology allows everyone to participate in every aspect of government. We have no one but ourselves to blame when public matters go wrong. Electronic democracy is not generally perceived as a way out of the quagmire. Some fear a tyranny of the majority, especially a majority whose will is no longer ambiguous, but arguments against electronic democracy today were Tory arguments against representative democracy yesterday. Hopefully those arguments will prove to be as wrong now as they were then.
            National political conventions attract large audiences as do presidential press conferences, but agitation for televised legislative deliberations is less than intense. Legislators wonder about the charisma required for electronic politics. They remember silent movie stars destroyed by talking pictures and fear drowning in the undertow of changing times. That progress costs legislative jobs is unfortunate, but those who call upon us for sacrifice should not object if it is their turn.
            International electronic communications offer hope of bi and tri-lingual populations as children watch foreign language programming at an age when language learning ability is acute. Nations, like children, learn from each other as each televises their response to common collective problems. Advanced electronic communications reached Columbus, Ohio when Warner Communications installed Qube, a cable network that permits viewer feedback. Qube's purpose was amusement and its popular system wide 'gong' show, in which viewing audiences graded contestants, presages political 'gong' shows in which unpopular politicians disappear at the touch of a hundred million buttons. Qube fell on hard times because subscribers were not sufficiently attracted to its two-way capacity to make it competitive, but Qube's difficulties do not diminish the potential of electronic democracy. Two-way television smacks of Orwell's big brother, but self-assured citizens will not mind if behavior becomes common knowledge. The need for privacy demonstrates an unwillingness to merge public and private persona, an inferiority-based unwillingness to take responsibility for one's acts. We want privacy because we are ashamed.
            Does it matter that viewers of pornography are counted by a cable network's computer or that we know viewing preferences? Are we damaged by learning more people watch pornography than we thought or will collective self knowledge be as beneficial to the body politic as individual self knowledge is to the individual? A movie theater manager used Qube statistics to defend himself against charges of lewdness. Local standards measured his crime, it being our Supreme Court's version of wisdom that each locality has the right to fix its standard of public sexual expression. Qube's records proved that thousands watched the offending film in the privacy of their homes. Electronics made it impossible to watch pornography privately and punish as miscreants, those who purvey it to a less affluent public.
            Transition to electronic societies will be difficult, but no one need be uncomfortable. Expanding television distribution systems costs less than weapons systems, but cost aside, the advantages of television networks devoted to politics are self evident. If they do nothing but end thirty second political commercials they will be worth it. New Jersey's Senator Frank Lautenburg moved in this direction with a cable television talk show in which he answered questions phoned in by viewers. According to newspaper accounts telephone lines were overwhelmed, frustrating those unable to connect. Television talk shows provide no harder information than political campaigns, because television by itself is not enough. For meaningful dialogues among millions of people you need computers.