The David Suzuki Reader by David Suzuki

Author:David Suzuki
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SCI026000
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
Published: 2010-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

Live by the Box, Perish by the Box

THE FUTURIST BEING INTERVIEWED ON THE RADIO TALK SHOW ECSTATICALLY extolled the benefits of the coming electronic revolution. After discussing the wonders of shopping, playing games, ordering movies, and checking the stock market, all from home through a computer and a television set, he gushed, “It sure beats having to put up with grumpy clerks, crowds, bad weather, and traffic jams.” The tone of his remarks seemed to suggest that reality, like weather and other human beings, is a nuisance compared with the kind of controlled world we can now access through our TV sets.

The electronic revolution is being touted as offering a limitless variety of titillation and experience. The marriage of computer and telecommunication gives us “virtual reality,” which, its proponents boast, is even better than the real thing.

Television is already the most pervasive and powerful medium of communication and information today, and it brings us more and more of our history lessons, values, priorities, and knowledge about the world. And the medium does provide astounding images few of us can ever experience in person—a view of war from the tip of a Patriot missile, close-up glimpses of Mars from a space vehicle, an intimate portrait of a patient’s intestinal polyps, daily blow-by-blow skirmishes within a dysfunctional family.

Advances in the technological side of television have been breathtaking. They can be seen in their most impressive state on every broadcast of a sports event or in computer-animated commercials. From a viewer’s perspective, television is better than reality; it’s faster, more intimate, and clearer than real life. As we rush toward a 500-channel universe, we are told that television also has unlimited educational potential—but education about what?

Not long ago, the television set was referred to as the “boob tube,” a pejorative expression that reflected the perceived lack of intellectual content of its transmissions. Not anymore. The television set will be the central component of the universe of virtual reality and the much-touted information highway. All but forgotten are those nettlesome questions about the real lessons being acquired from this electronic world by the viewing audience.

In real life, nature is exquisitely complex and diverse, but for television it has to be jazzed up because the pace of the natural world is too slow for the viewer conditioned to a constant stream of changing images. Consider what goes into a typical nature program. A wildlife photographer may spend months patiently waiting for a shot of a lifetime, one seldom seen by another human being. Incredible shots, such as those of a large mammal giving birth, avoiding a predator, finding food, or playing, are edited together to make a fast-paced program chock-full of great sequences. They can’t help being powerfully moving and evocative. Yet the final impression is often more like “Animals Do the Darnedest Things” than a genuine insight into their daily routines. Don’t visit the Amazon rain forest or an Arctic island if you expect to see the riot of color, shape, and movement portrayed in nature programs on television.

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