And since images and actions are influenced by the
light we view them in, it followed that light is what we
actually wanted to record and transmit. This is television.
Cumbersome and still owing a lot to mechanics, television
started as a news medium, allowing for almost instantaneous
connection between the source of information and the audience. It
was initially mostly illustrative. Today, it is constitutive, in
the sense that it not only records news, it makes news. It
constitutes a generalized mass-medium supporting entertainment
and ritual (political, religious, military).
Literacy corresponds to the experiences of human self-definition
in the world of classical physics and chemistry. It is based on
the same underlying structure, and projects characteristics of
this experience. Electricity and electronics correspond to very
fast processes (practically instantaneous), high leverage of
human action, diversity, more varied mediating elements, and
feedback. The film camera has the main characteristics of
literacy. It can be compared to the printing press. But the
comparison is only partially adequate since it writes movements
to film, and lets us read them together on the shared white page
called the screen. Between recording the movement and viewing
it, time is used for processing and duplication.
Television is structurally different, capturing movement and
everything else belonging to what we call reality, in order to
make it immediately available to the viewer.
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