media criticism...

...i tend to agree with or find interesting...

Television

"In the 1960s, George Gerber studied the behavior of heavy television watchers and found that the more TV a person watches, the more restricted and homogenized his opinions, beliefs, and thinking become....called the Cultivation Theory, ultimately implies that TV makes us less and less adaptive to the shifting complexity of real life. Individuality, spontaneity, and creativity diminish...
Television doesn't nurture new ideas or creative and critical thinking, it encourages uniformity and conformity. Television has also evolved into one of the two technological touch points for a lifestyle dedicated to the pursuit of is-ness -- a retreat away from the life of the mind and striving, toward a more or less static comtemplation of the pure sensation of being...neverending stream of passive entertainments, frequently supplied by electronic and digital media...[T]he common practice of watching three hours of television each evening, is simply a side effect of fatigue and stress, some people say. To the extent that elite groups of thinkers and inventors are able to pick up the slack, is-ness may not induce any serious near-term decline in the country's creativity, productivity, or standard of living...But the pursuit of is-ness as an end in itself, as opposed to the pursuit of happiness, is also having an adverse effect on the health of Americans...
Americans expend nine times as many minutes watching television as they do on sports or any other leisure-time physical activity, according to a group of University of California researchers...watching TV is also displacing reading, conversation, and other pursuits needed for the growth of good critical- and creative-thinking skills...Knowledge begets curiosity, interest, and involvement..."

Music and Computers

"The correlation of the growth of computers and sound-producing technology with an apparent decline in the quality of music could simply be the result of kids' preferring to play video games rather than spend weeks mucking around in a van playing one-night stands. On the other hand, the correlation could be coincidental. There could be other factors contributing to decay in musical creativity, for example, fewer venues for young musicians to play gigs. At the least, however, the trend is a cautionary tale about the potential pitfalls of the computer..."We never expected the computer to replace thought."...
...Researchers at the University of Munich surveyed 175,000 fifteen-year-olds from thirty-one countries, discovering that math and reading scores were significantly lower in households with two or more computers, compared to those with one or no computers [somehow I feel that the US could potentially have contradicted this finding?!?]...
I also feel there's no more reason to hector intelligent, self-aware people about spending too much time of the computer than there is to harangue people about watching too much television or drinking too much. It's common sense, really. A little parental (and self-) vigilance and the budding problem(s) vanish immediately...I am as easily distracted to start walking down that cyber highway as anyone. But perhaps I'm fortunate to also have a built-in alarm system, an instinct to seek the yin when I've had to much yang ( ;) )I do not know why I have this particular alarm system, and it is far from perfect in bringing perfection into my life, as I frequently invoke free will to flatly ignore it. I do know when I've been logged on too long, however. I know when I have to talk to people...I definitely do not even want to think about a world without computers...act on the awareness (of the adverse consequences that an obsessively virtual lifestyle will have on critical thinking)."

-Michael LeGault, Th!nk