The television revolutionized communications and created an indispensable venue for politics, education, and entertainment. We all enjoy the information access that television affords each of us in our daily lives. The evolution of the computer has transformed education, medicine, business, and government and has been the single most important catalyst for moving society from the industrial to the information age. These advances, however, have also blinded us, perhaps inadvertently, to the adverse effects of technology. Even the aforementioned innovations have created unforseen consequences.
Television violence is now the norm rather than the exception.
Do we remember the gift of the hand-written letter. . . If we have lost the written word to an earlier age, then we have lost much more than any of us are willing to acknowledge. When 1984 came and went, many people dismissed Orwell's prophecy about a technologically dependent society and the inequitable dispersion of political and economic power as absurd. The passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act in America will, in fact, increase these trends despite the rhetoric from corporate media moguls about the benevolence of free market enterprise in the media world and its unquestionable contributions to societal progress. An illusionary progress at best and certainly not for the benefit of all.