Television was far more pervasive and radicalizing than printing had been. It was massive. When Riesman and others spoke of books,... magazines, and radio as mass media, they could not imagine the size and shape of television. There never had been a medium that could reach everybody, and reach them with images of behavior as behavior without the rationalization of words. The audience for its programs was drawn from every social class and every social element. By the mere act of watching television, a heterogeneous society could engage in a purely homogeneous activity. Television images are more rapid and transient than the printed word. They make no demand on us to remember or reflect on them. This impermanence and the time of consumption cause us to spend extended hours with the medium but significantly less time with any one image or sequence of images. Television is instantaneous and simultaneous: Everyone gets the message at the same time and, at the same time that an event is happening. There is no lag time between a reporter witnessing an event and reporting it, and no time for reflection and analysis.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The family circle has widened. The worldpool of information fathered by the electric media--movies, Telstar, flight--far surpasses... any possible influence mom and dad can now bring to bear. Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world's a sage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communicatio...n.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium like radio from a cool one like the telephone, or a hot medium like the... movie from a cool one like TV. A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in "high definition." High definition is the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is, visually, "high definition." A cartoon is "low definition," simply because very little visual information is provided. Telephone is a cool medium, or one of low definition, because the ear is given a meager amount of information. And speech is a cool medium of low definition, because so little is given and so much has to be filled in by the listener. On the other hand, hot media do not leave so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience. Naturally, therefore, a hot medium like radio has very different effects on the user from a cool medium like the telephone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People are more likely to search for specific books in which they are actively interested and that justify all of that effort of r...eading them. Electronic images and sounds, however, thrust themselves into people's environments, and the messages are received with little effort. In a sense, people must go after print messages, but electronic messages reach out and touch people. People will expose themselves to information in electronic media that they would never bother to read about in a book.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why runners make lousy communists. In a word, individuality. It's the one characteristic all runners, as different as they are, se...em to share.... Stick with it. Push yourself. Keep running. And you'll never lose that wonderful sense of individuality you now enjoy. Right, comrade?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
St. Joseph in 1859 had the bustling appearance of a great fair, with excited travelers preparing to make the plains journey in pra...irie schooners, "rickety old farm wagons," and even small two-wheeled push carts. many bore such mottoes as--"Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady," "I Dare," "For Pike's Peak Ho." Before long many were to return, disappointed in their search for gold, hungry, ragged, and dispirited, their brave wagon boasts changed to "Prodigal Son," "Pike's Hell," "A Fool Is Born."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »