A World without Television Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

A World without Television - Essay Example On its part, the television touched our lives in more than one way, some good and some bad. The television made our life colorful (even the earlier black and white variety). It presented us with so many live entertainment options: the musicals, the stage plays, the soap operas, the fashion shows, and that too, without having to step out of our homes. It gave us the power to dream, to identify ourselves with the mannerisms of the most glamorous stars and celebrities, projected in larger-than-life roles. It taught us to desire and acquire things of luxury, through scores of advertisements, by creating an image of reality that is not real. By wanting more and more of these goodies, we helped our industries to innovate, produce more, flourish, and, in turn, enrich our lives further. Television became the homemaker, bringing a sense of togetherness in our families, taming our mischievous children with visual treats specially planned for them, discouraging husbands and wives from quarreling, and taking away the loneliness out of the lives of the elderly and infirm. It also helped us to integrate, not only our nation, but the whole world into a global village, by showing the live images of people from distant regions and countries, share their joys and sorrows, problems and achievements, cultures and traditions, during special shows and news programs. We became visual participants in the grim realities of life, through scenes from accident sites, war fronts, natural calamities like floods, earthquakes, and learnt to have compassion for the less fortunate fellow humans. No other medium could have matched the impact of the real-life visual images of television on our collective psyche. Of course there are certain undesirable things too. It has produced a generation of couch-potatoes who depend only on passive entertainment, and has stripped us of the opportunity and inspiration to do things ourselves. We are forced use less and less of our thinking faculty, creative imagination, and physical effort. Books and other elaborate written materials, which require a certain amount of contemplation, are no longer attractive to the younger generation. Unless controlled properly, unhealthy viewing content can also creep in, and spoil the morals of the society. In spite of good and ugly sides to it, the reality is that Television has grown with us as a family member, and it is already a partner in our social evolution. We can no longer allow it to disappear out of our lives. Our World view in absence of Television: Since olden days, people were interested to know about other civilizations across the globe. In those days, the main source of information was from the personal accounts of the voyagers and travelers. This interest was generally limited to the members of the trading communities, explorers or royal expeditions. Later, with the development of printing technology, written matter became easily transportable and transferable, and helped in creating a better and consistent understanding of the outside world. The nineteenth century saw a sudden rise in industrial activity, made possible by a series of inventions in the field of technology. This triggered a growth cycle of such magnitude that the whole society evolved into a large mass of affluence. This affluent mass of people had the time and