Is Television Anything More than a Tower of Babel?

Date:  Wed, 25 May 1994 11:08:00 EDT
From: "Gerald M. Phillips, Ph.D." 
Subject: Tower of Babel
To: Multiple recipients of list QC-L 

The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis, is fascinating. Grace De Laguna
asks if it means that people were driven apart by language differences or
whether language differences arose when they were driven apart.

Wynne Edwards notes that humans tend to cluster in tribal units of about
1640, the largest manageable human unit in which conflict can be controlled
by consensus.  It is, of course, conjecture, but interesting.

Whorf notes that language differences reflect differences in life experience
in much the same fashion as Darwin's discover that the claws on his finches
reflected that variety in their accustomed perches.

The application of video by Mr. Koppel, is, of course, a vanity, by a man
who is losing his ratings to a pair of clowns who variously reflect
differences in American tastes. The yuppie Leno in juxtaposition to blue
collar Letterman are collective antitheses to the snob, Koppel.  There are,
at the same time, people who watch Jenny Jones (clearly the best looking
of the competitors, the only female, and the only Canadian), as well as
Rush Limbaugh, Nashville Now, and Women's Beach Volleyball (my fave).

Attacks on television are now grown pretty tired.  McLuhan did not wipe
it out, nor did Newton Minow. Wasteland though it is, it has sustained
and entertained us, and informed us far beyond what most of you will
concede.

What is more frightening than the babble on television is the widening
gap between the techno sophisticated and the techno subordinated.  On that
score we have clearly met the criteria for C. P. Snow's "Two Cultures" and
show promise of mutating into a Huxleyian society.

Those of you out there who claim to be science fiction afficionados should
hunt down the finest piece of political sci-fi I know of, Bernard Wolfe,
LIMBO.

Wolfe was Leon Trotsky's secretary at the time of the assassination.  His
LIMBO is a graphic piece on the consequences of polarization of society.
For my part, I think the MAC/DOS quarrel is much more significant than
any criticism you can level at television, and the total ignorance of non
users as we approach the NII is the most significant of all.

gmp

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