Television is 100 years old today

Posted by qassiov 16 hours ago

Television is 100 years old today(diamondgeezer.blogspot.com)

562 points | 197 commentspage 4

empressplay 12 hours ago|

Related: Baird's Mechanical Television

https://paleotronic.com/2018/09/15/gadget-graveyard-bairds-m...

UncleSlacky 12 hours ago|

Also this site, which shows how the recorded Phonovision broadcasts were eventually recovered:

http://www.tvdawn.com/earliest-tv/phonovision-experiments-19...

nephihaha 9 hours ago||

I have mixed feelings about television and no longer have one. Some great series but also tonnes and tonnes of forgettable and insulting trash.

I think television has had a negative effect on community and social interaction.

willturman 12 hours ago||

> It’s entirely possible that my plangent noises about the impossibility of rebelling against an aura that promotes and vitiates all rebellion say more about my residency inside that aura, my own lack of vision, than they do about any exhaustion of U.S. fiction’s possibilities. The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naïve, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows. Today’s most engaged young fiction does seem like some kind of line’s end’s end. I guess that means we all get to draw our own conclusions. Have to. Are you immensely pleased.

- David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction

tibbydudeza 9 hours ago||

Watching Dallas on a Tuesday evening with the entire family gathered in our parents' bedroom with me and brother and sister at the end of the bed on the floor watching the latest schemes of JR Ewing and poor hapless brother Bobby.

We never had the TV set in the lounge - it was meant for special occasions like tea and cake for family gatherings.

We still have a TV but it hardly used - everybody has iPads in the house.

Kye 10 hours ago||

Blogger was new when TV was 75 years old. Glad to see it's still around.

fuzzfactor 13 hours ago||

My buddy has an old Portacolor, but it's only 60.

morkalork 13 hours ago||

Long live the new flesh

Edman274 10 hours ago|

It did always strike me as funny that Cronenberg had a movie about "what if TV was evil and made people murderous and the studio execs had to pay", and a movie about "what if video games were evil and made people murderous and their creators had to pay", but never a movie about "what if movies were evil and made people murderous and film directors had to pay". Obvious bias aside I wonder if it would work as a story - movies don't seem as hypnotic in the public consciousness, I believe.

throw4847285 12 hours ago||

Really? But Marquee Moon isn't even 50 years old yet. What were they doing for the first 50?

maximgeorge 12 hours ago||

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roysting 8 hours ago|

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