We Are More Naive Than

Anyone Who Has Studied The History Of Technology Knows That Technological Change Is Always A Faustian Bargain: Technology Giveth And Technology Taketh Away, And Not Always In Equal Measure. A New Technology Sometimes Creates More Than It Destroys. Sometimes, It Destroys More Than It Creates. But It Is Never One-sided. The Invention Of The Printing Press Is An Excellent Example. Printing Fostered The Modern Idea Of Individuality But It Destroyed The Medieval Sense Of Community And Social Integration.

My Argument Is Limited To Saying That A Major New Medium Changes The Structure Of Discourse; It Does So By Encouraging Certain Uses Of The Intellect, By Favoring Certain Definitions Of Intelligence And Wisdom, And By Demanding A Certain Kind Of Content - In A Phrase, By Creating New Forms Of Truth-telling.

Voting, We Might Even Say, Is The Next To Last Refuge Of The Politically Impotent. The Last Refuge Is, Of Course, Giving Your Opinion To A Pollster, Who Will Get A Version Of It Through A Desiccated Question, And Then Will Submerge It In A Niagara Of Similar Opinions, And Convert Them Into--what Else?--another Piece Of News. Thus We Have Here A Great Loop Of Impotence: The News Elicits From You A Variety Of Opinions About Which You Can Do Nothing Except To Offer Them As More News, About Which You Can Do Nothing.

For The Message Of Television As Metaphor Is Not Only That All The World Is A Stage But That The Stage Is Located In Las Vegas, Nevada.

Certainty Abolishes Hope, And Robs Us Of Renewal.