The Television as an Information Revolution
It took the world by storm. The television is actually about the age of my father or some years younger, but it seems like it has been here forever. So ubiquitous, so much taken as a given in every home.
As a culminating activity for our Media Literacy course, we were shown the information documentary that used Critical Theory and was narrated by Candice Bergen. For the Critical Theorist, truth is historically-produced. Reality is not out there, existing independently of human beings. It is created and mediated by the knower, favoring a class. It is shaped by economic, cultural, and social factors and accumulated over time. The job therefore is to reveal how this stock of knowledge came about. In making the information documentary, the writer and researcher weighed contending claims about the information revolution that was TV.
The opening showed us a fascinating application of television technology in relaying sporting activities, such as the car race. Several cameras, personnel, and mechanisms were at work. We saw the instantaneous television experience as a product of not just one, but multiple innovations that ultimately changed how we viewed our world (such as the use of the helicopter to relay signals). It enabled us to see things in different angles and distance. The CBS Sports telecast is a good example where the TV experience seemed to outdo the real experience, of being physically present at the venue and being able to watch the cars pass by. In Stuart Price’s words: TV pioneered visual experiences unique to the medium which allow us to see things in new ways. (p. 401, Media Studies)
The images are so convincing, with TV always cited as an example of realism. But the documentary showed us how modifications in the car race scenes were made to produce a thrilling viewing experience.
Contemplating further on the power of the image, the process was explained as having one dot scanning 500 lines. The process is unknown to the naked eye. TV scans reality, but it is not an innocent reproduction of reality. What we see is shaped by the institution. In our previous lecture, we encountered codification, where each medium has its own grammar, codifying reality in a certain way (quoted from McLuhan).
To borrow words from John Berger in “Ways of Seeing,” we only see what we look at; to look is an act of choice. What we view are the shots called by the director (presented as a male), from the many camera options he has. Candice Bergen said, it’s like a multitude of men having one brain led by a director who seemed to have three brains. It’s all clear: The limited form of sight. The image as a sight which has been recreated or reproduced.
Our lives are media-saturated. Simple technologies like the answering machine, something we usually take for granted, was just used in 1911. Cable TV came about in the late 40’s as a solution to a problem in terrain. Cable wires were cheaper means to transmit TV and radio signals. In 1980, CNN had its first broadcast.
We saw TV as having one central point of origin, and distributed widely. Brian Winston's Cultural Determinist account for television indicated 1884 as the date when a device for turning images into an electrical wave analogue using a selenium sensor was patented in Berlin . But nobody has thought of making money yet by bringing entertainment to the home. It was only in 1923 when the basic TV camera tube was patented.
The emergence of new technologies shaped how we do business. For example, the bulky video tape recorders gave rise to the vital role of the assistant camera man, who handles the cable and the heavy recorder as he follows the camera man. We don’t have them today in NBN-4. None that I am aware of. With the light, compact, hand-held cameras, they say that anybody can be a director today. (But experts would say instead: Anybody can be a bad director.) Diffusion of this technology gave rise to citizen journalism. Gradually, we see our primetime news being reshaped.
Stuart Price said that TV functions as a technology as a carrier of a variety of texts, and as a form which is received in a variety of ways and locations. (p. 360) With Tivo, which has not yet been thoroughly diffused here in the country, people no longer have to wait for their favorite programs. These programs will be waiting for them. With affordable China phones that have TV, we can watch shows while being stuck amidst the traffic jam. Almost gone were the days when people had to rush home from the office to catch their favourite soaps. Moreover, if one misses an episode or more of the Koreanovela in primetime, it can be watched in a marathon manner. Just look it over in the video store.
Towards the end, “Understanding Television” surfaced the problems of digital manipulation and harmful effects on the family. Either we are bombarded with images that we assume as real, or we don’t care if it’s real so long as we enjoyed viewing. The bottom line is, it becomes questionable when it involves deceit. Fighting over the remote control is already a problem among families since days of old. There is even the issue of control over the remote control. Often, it belongs to the father. It reinforced the idea that the home is a place of work for the female (household chores) and a place of entertainment for the male (relaxation after a day’s office work).
Irving Fang, in “A History of Mass Communication,” referred to the fifth information revolution as the creation of the Communication Toolshed Home. According to the author, it…
…evolved during the middle of the twentieth century, transforming
the home into the central location for receiving information and
entertainment, thanks to the telephone, broadcasting, recording,
improvements in print technologies, and cheap, universal mail
services. The century has, of course, been a period of unrelieved
political, cultural, and psychological turmoil and shifting. That the
media of communication have become inseparable from our lives
is a matter that has been written about in countless worried articles,
books, and research papers.
In our study of periodization among media forms, we saw that the pace of information revolution gained speed, with the recent ones having overlapped in the last two centuries. Today, concerns are raised on the information elite. For one, if economies depend upon information, what is there for parts of the globe which are not fully integrated into the stream? And if they are, will it successfully lead to the accomplishment of a monolithic worldview project? Are there really many choices, or are we trapped in the few hands owning and controlling the media?
Critical Theory poses arguments on power relations. Things did not happen just because they had to. And this is precisely why we always have to be in a questioning mood.
As a culminating activity for our Media Literacy course, we were shown the information documentary that used Critical Theory and was narrated by Candice Bergen. For the Critical Theorist, truth is historically-produced. Reality is not out there, existing independently of human beings. It is created and mediated by the knower, favoring a class. It is shaped by economic, cultural, and social factors and accumulated over time. The job therefore is to reveal how this stock of knowledge came about. In making the information documentary, the writer and researcher weighed contending claims about the information revolution that was TV.
The opening showed us a fascinating application of television technology in relaying sporting activities, such as the car race. Several cameras, personnel, and mechanisms were at work. We saw the instantaneous television experience as a product of not just one, but multiple innovations that ultimately changed how we viewed our world (such as the use of the helicopter to relay signals). It enabled us to see things in different angles and distance. The CBS Sports telecast is a good example where the TV experience seemed to outdo the real experience, of being physically present at the venue and being able to watch the cars pass by. In Stuart Price’s words: TV pioneered visual experiences unique to the medium which allow us to see things in new ways. (p. 401, Media Studies)
The images are so convincing, with TV always cited as an example of realism. But the documentary showed us how modifications in the car race scenes were made to produce a thrilling viewing experience.
Contemplating further on the power of the image, the process was explained as having one dot scanning 500 lines. The process is unknown to the naked eye. TV scans reality, but it is not an innocent reproduction of reality. What we see is shaped by the institution. In our previous lecture, we encountered codification, where each medium has its own grammar, codifying reality in a certain way (quoted from McLuhan).
To borrow words from John Berger in “Ways of Seeing,” we only see what we look at; to look is an act of choice. What we view are the shots called by the director (presented as a male), from the many camera options he has. Candice Bergen said, it’s like a multitude of men having one brain led by a director who seemed to have three brains. It’s all clear: The limited form of sight. The image as a sight which has been recreated or reproduced.
Our lives are media-saturated. Simple technologies like the answering machine, something we usually take for granted, was just used in 1911. Cable TV came about in the late 40’s as a solution to a problem in terrain. Cable wires were cheaper means to transmit TV and radio signals. In 1980, CNN had its first broadcast.
We saw TV as having one central point of origin, and distributed widely. Brian Winston's Cultural Determinist account for television indicated 1884 as the date when a device for turning images into an electrical wave analogue using a selenium sensor was patented in Berlin . But nobody has thought of making money yet by bringing entertainment to the home. It was only in 1923 when the basic TV camera tube was patented.
The emergence of new technologies shaped how we do business. For example, the bulky video tape recorders gave rise to the vital role of the assistant camera man, who handles the cable and the heavy recorder as he follows the camera man. We don’t have them today in NBN-4. None that I am aware of. With the light, compact, hand-held cameras, they say that anybody can be a director today. (But experts would say instead: Anybody can be a bad director.) Diffusion of this technology gave rise to citizen journalism. Gradually, we see our primetime news being reshaped.
Stuart Price said that TV functions as a technology as a carrier of a variety of texts, and as a form which is received in a variety of ways and locations. (p. 360) With Tivo, which has not yet been thoroughly diffused here in the country, people no longer have to wait for their favorite programs. These programs will be waiting for them. With affordable China phones that have TV, we can watch shows while being stuck amidst the traffic jam. Almost gone were the days when people had to rush home from the office to catch their favourite soaps. Moreover, if one misses an episode or more of the Koreanovela in primetime, it can be watched in a marathon manner. Just look it over in the video store.
Towards the end, “Understanding Television” surfaced the problems of digital manipulation and harmful effects on the family. Either we are bombarded with images that we assume as real, or we don’t care if it’s real so long as we enjoyed viewing. The bottom line is, it becomes questionable when it involves deceit. Fighting over the remote control is already a problem among families since days of old. There is even the issue of control over the remote control. Often, it belongs to the father. It reinforced the idea that the home is a place of work for the female (household chores) and a place of entertainment for the male (relaxation after a day’s office work).
Irving Fang, in “A History of Mass Communication,” referred to the fifth information revolution as the creation of the Communication Toolshed Home. According to the author, it…
…evolved during the middle of the twentieth century, transforming
the home into the central location for receiving information and
entertainment, thanks to the telephone, broadcasting, recording,
improvements in print technologies, and cheap, universal mail
services. The century has, of course, been a period of unrelieved
political, cultural, and psychological turmoil and shifting. That the
media of communication have become inseparable from our lives
is a matter that has been written about in countless worried articles,
books, and research papers.
In our study of periodization among media forms, we saw that the pace of information revolution gained speed, with the recent ones having overlapped in the last two centuries. Today, concerns are raised on the information elite. For one, if economies depend upon information, what is there for parts of the globe which are not fully integrated into the stream? And if they are, will it successfully lead to the accomplishment of a monolithic worldview project? Are there really many choices, or are we trapped in the few hands owning and controlling the media?
Critical Theory poses arguments on power relations. Things did not happen just because they had to. And this is precisely why we always have to be in a questioning mood.
