alphabet, printing press, and the telegraph, which were turning points in society because they changed the way people thought about themselves.To understand how and why people are affected by television, one must first become familiar with McLuhan’s idea of the electronic age. With the advent of television, the power of the printed word is decreased significantly. Books become “made-for-t.v.” movies and newspapers come alive with twenty-four hour a day headlines. Marshall McLuhan noted this increase in sound and touch and declared that instant communication was a return to prealphabetic oral tradition. The television connected people in a way that created an “all at once world” where closed human systems are rare. Suddenly everyone could share the same experience of watching images on t.v. at the same time with the same effects. To McLuhan, this meant returning to a single global village where the electronic media re-tribalize the human race. The whole world is becoming like the small town beauty shop where rumors and gossip include foreign ministers and movie stars. We all become busy bodies tracking everyone else’s business.As we live, we search for meaning and the process of watching television is no different. However, it is the procedure used to compute this meaning that differs. Watching television “has often been seen as a routine, unproblematic, passive process: the meanings of the programs are seen as given and obvious; the viewer is seen as passively receptive and mindless.” (Livingstone p.3) This would mean that the television audience does not have to do anything but stare without thinking, and that the pictures we see do not leave any space for interpretation. However, we are a generation that has grown up learning to read television and interpret the conventions of television in order to put a meaning to the images shown. This creates the notion of “readin...
