Why TV, not Facebook or Twitter, is still revolutionizing the world

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/19/revolution_in_a_box?page=full

by robg • 17 years ago

32 25 17 years ago

foreignpolicy.com

gbookman• 17 years ago

150 Million new users expected by 2013. Not bad for something invented in the 20's.

staunch• 17 years ago

Does the user adoption chart look like a hockey stick? If not no VC is going to touch this slow-and-steady technology.

cousin_it• 17 years ago

Food adoption is growing at a similar rate, I think.

unalone3• 17 years ago

Why can't they all be revolutionizing the world? This meme where only one thing can be revolutionary at a time really bugs me. Revolutions happen all the time and they are all awesome.

I also dislike that an article like this needs to open with the typical anti-TV comments. Ray Bradbury always struck me as a whiny brat of an old man who refused to embrace technology as being really neat. Whenever somebody quotes him just because he's Ray Bradbury I sigh a little.

abossy• 17 years ago

I totally agree. The overarching theme here is communications technology. Both the Internet and Television enable us to communicate on a massive scale. They're not even completely distinct entities anymore, and the lines between the two will become more blurred in the future.

timr• 17 years ago

You're missing the point: television is everywhere. Even if you're generous and you assume continued exponential growth of the internet, it won't have the same global reach for a long time to come.

When most of the world is still at the stage where clean water is revolutionary technology, it's kind of silly to suggest that Twitter is "changing the world" of much more than people who live comfortable lives in first-world countries.

unalone3• 17 years ago

Again I'll ask: Since when is a revolution measured by quantity? I mean, Twitter is arguably more cutting-edge than television. So in one sense it's more revolutionary. But television is spreading faster, so that's a revolution that's hitting more people. It doesn't need to be a competition between the two. I for one don't expect to pay television much mind in the coming years, no matter how quickly it's spreading everywhere else.

InclinedPlane• 17 years ago

What part of exponential don't you understand? At the current growth rate of the internet since 2000 you'd expect the entire population of the world to be using the internet by 2020. That may not occur, but you'd have to assume an end to the current growth rate of the internet.

jrwoodruff• 17 years ago

Agreed. Television may actually be the leading edge of the information revolution - it streams information, culture and entertainment to billions. Once an area is electrified, television enters the scene, and behind that comes... the internet? (Where's Bill Curtis when you need him)

uninverted• 17 years ago

Classic game theory: it's (supposedly) a net benefit for everyone to watch TV, but for any given person it's a net loss.

tomjen2• 17 years ago

Not necessarily, just because we have access to better tools in the west doesn't mean that television can't be a benefit to those that have previously had access to none.

I believe that, if choosen wisely, television can improve your knowledge of the world, give you new ideas and stimulate creativity.

cglee• 17 years ago

Why is it a net loss? I agree that a lot of programs on prime time are trashy and sensationalistic, but there are a lot of great programs on television as well.

sethg• 17 years ago

The article claims that (a) television prevents war and other bad things by exposing people to role models (e.g. women with few children) and other cultures (e.g. Kobe Bryant in China); (b) as access to TV, particularly digital TV, increases, people will have more choices about what they watch.

I wonder if these two influences will end up working against one another; if Network A, whose soap operas model a multi-cultural community where women control their fertility and control their own businesses, is in competition with Network B, whose soap operas model pious, nationalistic, and dutiful women with eight children each, who will end up having the most influence on the culture?

conanite• 17 years ago

... soap characters are typically well-educated and have few children. And they prove to be extraordinarily powerful role models: Simply giving a village access to cable TV [...] has the same effect on fertility rates as increasing by five years the length of time girls stay in school.

Oscar Wilde claimed "life follows art". I guess he wasn't thinking of the transformative power it could have over millions of lives, and might have debated whether soaps are "Art".

Who wants to watch soaps about pious mothers-of-8? Our choice of role-models is about who we want to become, and perhaps one of the success factors for TV is that it offers poor people a vision of The American Lifestyle ... something to aspire to (at least from their perspective). On the other hand, I've never figured out why anybody watches Coronation Street, a half-hour banging my head on the wall would be better spent.

A soap character who's beautiful, charming, popular, wealthy, witty, racist, xenophobic, homophibic, antisemitic could be a very dangerous thing indeed. If TV becomes a tool for manipulating culture, it could get nasty in the wrong hands.

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

Who wants to watch soaps about pious mothers-of-8?

You obviously don't live in the US! While it's 'reality' rather than soap, two popular cable shows here include (until very recently) 'Jon & Kate plus 8', about a couple who had twins and then unexpectedly ended up with an additional set of sextuplets after a fertility treatment - they have just divorced, but the Kate character is indeed pious; and '18 and counting' about an extremely pious Christian family who rejoice in 18 their 18 children, with #19 on the way. I wish I were kidding, but I'm not.

I'd worry less about soaps-as-propaganda than you, if only because any kind of drama requires at least some ambiguity of characters and a balance of oppositional characters in order to gain emotional participation on the part of viewers. Of course, episodic dramas like police and hospital shows make it easier to exploit stereotypes if programming directors see fit to do that. Another context that has been the subject of some controversy is in Palestine, where TV channels operated by Hamas, a militant group, have been host to children's shows featuring violently anti-Israel content. Israelis have naturally been deeply offended, while some Palestinians argue they were forced to address the issue by the fact of real-world political conflict.

dangoldin• 17 years ago

You can argue that people who use Facebook and Twitter are more likely to revolutionize the world than the people who are watching TV.

In that case although the number of people watching TV is greater their "weighted productivity" is less.

evgen• 17 years ago

That's a pretty smug attitude to sport without data to back up your claims.

What can be said, with strong data, is that _right now_ the people who produce and create TV shows around the world have more influence and capability to revolutionize global culture than all of silicon valley put together (including our precious Google...) The best chance Facebook and Twitter have to play a role in this game is as a tool to inform and influence key members of this infotainment community.

chrischen3• 17 years ago

You're comparing TV, the technology, to companies. I think the internet is much more revolutionary than TV. I mean a country like China goes as far as censoring the internet (and it takes much more effort to do this than to control the TV stations) because it knows it is not only revolutionary, but capable of inciting revolutions.

Perhaps TV, when it was first invented, was comparably revolutionary, but in terms of today, the internet is the big, new thing.

hristov2• 17 years ago

You can argue that anybody not watching TV is far more likely to get ANYTHING done than someone watching TV.

hristov2• 17 years ago

What a bunch of BS. They did not show any evidence of the supposed benefits of TV. Obviously as poor people get slightly less poor they will get a TV and will also do less of the other things associated with very poor people, like have too much children, etc. But there is no reason to think one thing causes the other.

TV is merely a mass broadcasting machine. It can be good if the people doing the broadcasting use it for positive purposes (e.g., education, etc.) Or it can be evil. You can just as easily use TV to start racial hatred or a war as you can to educate people about different cultures. Or it can be just a mind-numbing waste of time, which is the usual case.

But either way it is almost always used by a small group of elites (either government or business elites) to cram information into a large group of people, without the recipients being able to say anything or contribute anything. So regardless how it is used it usually ends up creating rather boring and homogeneous culture.

As such the Internet is endlessly preferable to TV. It is nice that all those poor people are getting TV but they will be so much better off when they finally get the Internet.

c00p3r• 17 years ago

Think how much money invested in content alone - billions and billions. When a fraction of that amount would be poured into a mobile content - it will be completely different picture. Financial and market news channels for mobile devices is a simplest idea. Time-wasting (passing) reality shows and sports translations are another winners.

Why TV, not Facebook or Twitter, is still revolutionizing the world

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