Television's Impact on Society

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Television's Impact on Society

Although television is perceived as one of the greatest scientific inventions of the 20th century and is watched enormously by the American public, it is often criticized as the root of intellectual destruction for children. Television has been praised throughout history for its ability to transmit visual images with accompanying sound to entertain, educate, and to provide a sense of truth. Through the miracle of television the public has witnessed extraordinary historical events in an approach that no other form of communication has ever been able to duplicate. It has brought the man landing on the moon, the Kennedy assassination, and the Vietnam War into the living room, as if the viewers were actually there. Although television has captured such memorable, historical documentation, it also can be perceived as an evil storyteller. Through the illustrations of TV, children have witnessed war, murder, hate, prejudice, sexual promiscuity, as well as other forms of inapt actions, before they were even old enough to ride a bicycle, without training wheels.

The miracle of the television is credited to Philo Taylor Farnsworth, who invented the existing system of the television transmission and reception at his 202 Green Street Laboratory in San Francisco, California in 1927. (Philo Farnsworth, 2002: 1). Though, visionary inventors first imagined ideas of television?s potentials as the 19th century ended. George Carey of Boston first hinted transmitting every component of a picture over numerous circuits in 1875, but others like W.E. Sawyer introduced converting of images over a single wire or channel by quickly scrutinizing picture components in progressio...

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