If the cake and soda are taken away, the child screams in fury. Good food is at first rejected, and it remains unconvincing for a long time. Phony kinship and phony enlargement are intimately tied to each other and to familiar 20 th century technologies. Let's say that before everything else, people who authentically care for you want you to be safe away from home, in the way a loving parent protects a child playing outside, and in the home, where a loving parent creates the kinds of stimulations that are conducive to laughter and growth. It's a truism by now that the 20 th century is the century of the automobile.
Cars are what the adult world give to adolescents to spend time in away from home.
Since these kids can range far from home so easily, of course they do so. If the whole century belongs to cars, then the second half of it certainly belongs to television along with cars. We give television first not to adolescents, but to infants, to occupy their time inside the home. White would grieve in 1997. But this technological replacement is new.