Taunted by Telvision

  Ever since we finished our lesson on broadcast and television in class, I can't help but ponder the history of how radio broadcasting and television came to be every time I am sitting in front of my television at home. How did people come up with the idea of television? Why do so many people seem to be entranced in the world of TV? What is it about TV that creates such a semblance to our real lives? These are all questions I am able to answer after having learned the history of radio broadcasting and TV.
  Radios used to be something that people would go to their friends houses and listen to something that would be on the radio show. Nowadays, that description seems to fit more into the TV category, which proves that when television was invented, it did indeed steal some of the spotlight from radios. When television was first created, people were amazed. Back in the 1930s, TV could be deceived by many people as something from the future; they simply could not imagine that they could have a box in their home that would show them moving pictures with audio. It shocks me that today, I don't know anyone without a TV in their house and more people have a TV in their house than indoor plumbing. So literally, TV has become more important to people than having running water, but there was a time when running water was new and not many people had it, so we can definitely see the process of technology turning into something basically everyone has as time passes.
  Our perception of reality is influenced a great deal by TV. Because TV is so lifelike, too often we turn what happens on TV into how we think society truly is. For example, when people watch lots of crime shows, they think that the world is more unsafe than it actually is, because they see real people living in this altered version of our world on TV. Also, so many of the fashion trends, sayings, and stereotypes come from what we view on TV. When we see lots of people wearing a certain style of clothing on TV, that style becomes so much more popular in real life because we can think that TV is our actual reality. This process is followed for things we say and stereotypes we believe to be true; we see it in the TV world, then we incorporate it into our world.
  I was so interested in this particular lesson because I was intrigued by how much TV plays a role in our daily life and how much we perceive to be our reality. It was super interesting to find out the reasons behind the rise of television and why it influences us so much, it was a little bit creepy; this topic definitely makes me want to find out more about how television taunts us.