American society is pretty polarized lately, and it's not just politically polarized -- it's economically and socially polarized. Class resentment abounds, and anger is lurking just below the surface of what the public opinion polls usually ask questions about. And it seems to me that in addition to all of the other things separating us, our preferred selection of technology also acts as a divide between American citizens.
To simplify things a bit, it seems to me that huge differences exist between television watchers and people who use computers. Obviously there's a huge middle ground in between. But I'm convinced that the people who rely much more on computers than television have substantially different kinds of brains than the people who primarily or exclusively watch TV.
Using me and Mrs. old new lefty as a demographic sample of two, we really don't have any TV to speak of in our house. The little woman's #3 son took pity on her because she couldn't watch Dancing With the Stars, and he gave her a big 7" screen that is just about never used. I put up with watching mandatory four minute segements of the program that she usually pulls up on the computer, but on the whole I wouldn't touch TV with a 10 foot pole.
My only exception to this is when I go to the gym. Since I watch so little TV, I actually watch the visual on the commercials (with the sound off) and I listen to my music on headphones while I work out. I discovered that the local TV station is airing a lot of public service ads in prime time. This is a clear indication that not only is the economy in the tank, but that the internet has also stolen a huge chunk of TV money just like the internet has affected newspapers adversely.
Now let's look at what I've observed about TV viewers. Many of them are older than I am, which means they're well over 65. Many TV viewers are in lower stratas of education and income, as well as being more unemployed. And of course, many TV viewers are not liberals but liberal haters, i.e. conservatives. That's one of the reasons why F*x News has the top 13 rated news programs. The exceptions to this general demographic that I've described are sports fans and the Oprah crowd.
If you don't think that my sample of two nearly exclusive computer viewers is enough, why don't we look at the general population of Open Salon? Discounting the Chinese spammers, the real people on OS appear to be slanted decidedly to the left. To be sure, there are conservatives in the OS crowd. But they certainly appear to be in the minority. But the place is filled with artists, people interested in actively sharing their lives, poets, and wise asses of all stripes.
If you can look at Open Salon as some kind of sample of computer geeks (discounting the self-select biases of the sample), then you can see major differences in the mentality between computer users and TV watchers. It seems to me that using a computer as your main tool almost requires you to live a life of the mind. By that, I mean that someone (even a porno hound or a LOL cat searcher) is actively trying to acquire and assimilate information. The computer, (and I'm including smart phones here) by the very nature of its technology requires you to hunt and gather information. And there's this active sense of being connected on a personal and active basis to whatever spot you've happened to pull up anywhere in the world on any subject.
To me, the internet is like a TV, only with a billion channels that always have your favorite program on for you when you turn on the machine, no matter what time of day it is. Assuming that I want to find a radio or TV program to watch on the computer, it's necessary for me to have done some research beforehand in order to get there. And the relation that I have to "channel surfing" is substantially different on a computer from channel surfing on TV.
One of the best books on television ever written was by Jerry Mander entitled Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. In this book, Mander says that TV watching encourages passivity and a hypnotic like state. We can sit slack jawed in front of the boob tube with a big bowl of pork rinds while we click the remote through the channel selection to see what's on. And what we get is a pre-packaged deal. Above all, television is about spectacle. There are the quick cuts, the bright colors, the beautiful people, and all of those ads urging us to spend, spend, spend more money on those consumer items for the sheeple to buy.
Getting on the net, first means that you're there for a purpose. You want to find something -- usually something in particular. For example, I'll bet there are a hell of a lot of OS junkies out there. Admit it. How many times do you go back to the computer after being off of it a few hours, just to see what comments have been made either on your blog or one of your favorites? I know this is my kind of behavior. The fact of the matter is, not only is there an obsessiveness in our relations with our computers, but there's a purpose driven obsessiveness. And each of us has our own individual preferences that are distinct from one another.
This is not the case of television. Even if you have 500 channels, those 500 channels are all you're going to get. And for the most part, those channels are pre-packaged deals almost requiring passivity and consumption. A hardcore TV user is almost the opposite to me. Even if you're a passive searcher for information, you're a broadcasting station. And it should be common knowledge that there may be 15 people monitoring every website you go to or every keystroke you make, but you'll never know who they are. TV? Hardly anyone except Neilsen or the people you're watching the idiot box with care what you're watching.
As to news and information, unlike those TV viewers that only get their news from F*x, I've counted a full 33 different, regular news sources that I depend on weekly from all over the world on my computer. Could I watch Iranian, French, or Russian state TV with a cable or satellite television? I don't think so.
And if you are an active presence, be it in a chat room or on OS, you must establish an identity. Now you can hide behind an avatar and pretend to be someone or something other than what you are. But I'll contend that even if you do this, you reveal vast amounts of information about yourself. Are you an educated person? It will show up in how you spell words. Are you American, French, Arab, Latino, or whatever? Your cultural heritage will be on your identity like a fingerprint.
Whereas the television requires a mass audience of cultural lumpenproletariate, the computer requires activists and intellectuals and techno nerds, and all of this means an engaged and enquiring mind.
And that's why demographically speaking, in the long run America will substantially change as the audience of television viewers gets smaller and smaller, and the number of people who spend almost all of their electronic time on the computer get larger and larger.
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However ...
There are great things on television now, better than any movie in the theaters, and it would be sad to miss those works of art just because TV is in general a malignant tool of the Oligarchy that is ruining life in this country. Do you have a DVD player? Then pout these items on your netflix queue:
Seasons 1-4 The West Wing
Seasons 1-5 Friday Night Lights
Season 1 Treme
Seasons 1-4 The Sopranos
Seasons 1-4 Mad Men
Mildred Pierce, HBO miniseries
There's more but that's a good start: the list represents a wide range: HBO, basic cable and network offerings. Check them out ...
Or find them on youtube ...
And being able to get English foreign media is priceless in today's world of propaganda insanity.
But the tele has dumbed everyone down as far as I can tell. Way down...
On the other hand, there is a danger here, as well: We end up living in different worlds, believing in different facts. At least in the old days, what people like Walter Cronkite said was generally accepted as the truth. Not always for good reasons, but still - it gave us a common starting point in discussions.
Still, I suppose the web and TV will soon merge, as programs become available on demand and your TV gets an internet connection.
For me, the thing about TV dramas is that I spend so much time reading and searching on the net, that looking at most things on my TV computer is a relatively short term experience. If I were to spend an hour soaking up The Sopranos, say, I'd feel as if I was goofing off. And also, since some of those characters are uncomfortably close to people in my environment in Chicago there's that feeling that I shouldn't be so closely involved in the goings on of Tony and Walnuts. But I am a West Wing junkie!
And of course, this brings up the subject of how much the computer rewires all of our brains. Doesn't everyone here have a more of a short attention span now because of the computer? I think that's a fact that's been documented.
I find myself having to make time to get involved in actually reading books, because reading a whole damn book is a chore when you're a net hog. When we got a computer down in Mexico, I found that my book reading decreased by better than 50%. I judge that by the footage of books that I consume on an annual basis.
That's obviously a bad side effect of computer-itis. And OEsheepdog is right. Having a computer allows you to live in your own little purified ideological world, free of any contamination of diverse opinion if that's how you choose to assimilate information.
And going in that direction ultimately leads to madness.
I find myself amazed at how many good solid average folks have arrived at pretty much the same conclusions about our present economic system and the effect it has on people as human beings, as those conclusions voiced by some OS contributors who exhibit great knowledge and perspicacity about these matters.
We are almost all seeing the same "tree" in the same "forest" even if viewing it from different viewpoints. I am most surprised at the numbers of those, both regular folks and intellectuals, who espouse throwing the baby out with the bathwater by heading off full tilt in the multitude directions that represent "socialist philosophy" on OS. No two advocates of it seem to have the same ideas of what it is - or isn't; and some of those ideas are very contradictory.
Indeed socialism, as espoused by the many 'sects' claiming to know something of it, looks a great deal more like a group of religious philosophies than a sober and sane social/political/economic single philosophy. In this it reminds one of christianity.
Those who have opted to use TV as their source of information input are swayed this way and that by rather simple arguments, often depending not so much on the argument as on the vigour, manner and number of repetitions of its presentation.
Computer users seem to involve themselves in an interactive dialogue on a regular basis. It is so heartening to see someone, even one who knows little about a subject, jump in with both feet, express themselves, learn from the responses they garner, and grow in intellectual capacity and often also in emotional stability.
OS may not have become what the mandarins of Salon had expected but it has, nevertheless, become a thriving, viable, exciting community that is flexible enough to survive the exiting of many a good mind and talent while, at the same time, welcoming new contributors seamlessly and without disruption.
Ya gotta love it!!
(ᴼᴥ ̃)
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So how to read more?
GET A NOOK COLOR
I know it seems odd. Why pay for a machine that puts a book in your hand, when you can get the same book for free at some local tag sale? I actually have no answer for that one. I admit it's a crazy indulgence. But I can tell you my reading has multiplied by a factor of ten since I got my little tablet reader. You commented on my Nook Color post -- something about the daunting limitations of dial-up. But there are wi-fi hotspots everywhere and it only takes a few seconds to download a book. The reading experience, it makes the old ink-and-paper model seem as antiquated (and charming!) as the horse and buggy.
Get in real car, ONL!
Stamp on the gas and watch that newly translated Tolstoy take off.
For one thing, I typically watch TV with my wife but use my computer alone. Same with her - computer is mostly a solitary experience while television is often more social/communal.
I can't say I belong exclusively to either community; in fact, I'm not sure which community I'd belong to primarily based on your definition. This dichotomy just doesn't fit my life.
While I think in the end, the hunter/gatherer method is a better way to get news, the downside is that people can hunt and gather whatever they want and only expose themselves to sources that validate their pre-existing opinions. OS conservatives have my respect simply for allowing themselves to be challenged by opposing viewpoints (though I wish some of them would actually consider those viewpoints for a moment before leaping to comment). At least TV-watchers will inevitably be exposed to things they disagree with from time to time.
One of my older relatives believes he takes a balanced approach to the news by reading online articles in the morning and watching television in the evening, which means he goes to Foxnews.com in the morning and watches Bill O'Reilly at night!
A case in point was the F*x viewer outrage at the Eugene, OR City Council's decisions as to whether (or how much) to say the Pledge of Allegiance before council meetings. The mayor and other councilors were subjected to hundreds of abusive messages from out-of-staters -- all of whom had picked up the news from F*x, and then gotten on their computers to send hate mail to the commie pinko Eugeneans.
Obviously, this is an example of one's identity showing brightly through the internet, and it clearly identified those people (by self-selection) wh0 chose to use F*x as a single news source. But again, I would contend that people like this still conform closely to the demographic of people much more dependent on passive TV watching than active computer using.
kosher, every time you post on OS or elsewhere, you demonstrate your literacy, broad educational background, and acceptance of diverse viewpoints. And I would contend that for more reasons than what I've laid out in this essay, that America is a place with a greater divide now than in its recent history. Part of the reason is the divide in techno usage that I've talked about. But there are obviously other reasons as well.
We are more divided than we've been before. As I write this, one of the reasons is dawning on me, and I don't know why it never did before, probably because I didn't think in these terms:
Two unrelated phenomena occurred nearly simultaneously:
1. The civil rights movement, followed closely by the feminist movement, followed very closely by the rise of PC and the gay rights movement left a dominant White heterosexual male population feeling threatened and delegitimized, a feeling magnified by the fact that an awful lot of us weren't aware of oppressing anyone intentionally (I include myself as a White male though not as someone who felt threatened or delegitimized). In the middle of all this was the antiwar movement, an unusually major attack on institutions we'd relied on and trusted, plus a colossal rise in illegal drug use (which has some roots in conflicts with authority and a violation of institutional trust, both in terms of wildly inconsistent standards for intoxicants and in terms of a lot of official lies about the consequences of marijuana, which made a shambles of official credibility such that legitimate warnings about more potent drugs were largely unheeded).
2. Middle class incomes stopped growing, but middle class expenses didn't.
That left a whole lot of people feeling threatened by one group of factors while actually being threatened by another. They weren't, however, separating the two; they simply noticed that the world seemed to be going to Hell in a handbasket and, based on timing, assumed they were all related.
A population this angry first lashed out in a few directions, starting with the rather odd grass roots defeat of the ERA. Unfortunately, they proved to be easy to manipulate - appeal to anger and point.
There were initially some safeguards in place to keep this from getting excessive but these began to erode, particularly during the Reagan administration, as regulations on media consolidation began to relax and as Republican tactics shifted. Consolidation meant that media ownership became concentrated on one side of the spectrum. Shifting tactics became apparent when relentless references to the media as liberal meant that the media started to self-censor to appear impartial and, in doing so, lost their impartiality and their teeth. Now people like Fox News could stoke partisan anger without being called on factual errors or monstrous breaches of ethics, such as the owner of Fox News contributing a great deal of money to one party during an election.
The divisions are pretty institutionalized at this point. They won't all hold - for example, the gay rights issue will simply age into its own because young people are way more universally accepting of homosexuality than their elders - but some might.
Also, I can tell you from personal experience that carefully applied logic works. I've personally changed a few opinions away from the canard that homosexuality is a choice. Canards are fundamentally vulnerable because, well, they're canards. It just takes work and the right conversations, not to mention the right approach, which is to stick to the logic of the topic and steer clear of venting at the population viewing the canard as a given. People who are attacked get defensive and defensive people are almost impossible to persuade about anything. When possible, the Socratic approach works, because it results in an answer being their own.