It seems a point has been missed in the debate as to whether computers are as “bad” as televisions. I’ve never met anyone through my television, but I did meet my wife via computer. I’ve never produced any content for television, but many of my written words have made it out into cyberspace. I could go on but my point is that that the internet, for all it’s vast wastelands, is a much more decentralized and democratic medium than television. To say that computers are like televisions because they both have screens and moving pictures, is to say that bicycles are like airplanes because they both have wheels.

Technologies are, for the most part, benign. It is us the users who ultimately decide whether to use a hammer to pound a nail, or to pull a nail. The problem when it comes to television is that very few of us get to operate the tools. More often than not we are the nail.

Not long ago, I pulled into a gas station that actually had televisions posted atop the pumps with..I kid you not…a Petroleum industry Broadcasting Network and on it were weather and news snippets between NASCAR films and a Demolition Derby.

I still hold to my sneaking hunch that the Telly is much like the Bread and Circuses of the late-Roman Forum, more a reflection of the addled culture than a cause of it.

As to alien-hood, embrace it warmly because to be an oddball or fringe-outrider in this besotted day is to demonstrate a fitting level of disgust for something that , like a drunk, is immune from anything resembling self-preservation. You are likely correct in at least one aspect…the Telly is a pallisade obstructing any kind of reflective analysis of the prevailing dysfunction of the evolving beast Publicus Auto-Carnivorius.

On the other hand, my video and dvd collection is huge, almost as large as my collection of books so I have little need for the droppings of the various networks.

I kept coming back to culture. I think engaging in culture is important for Christians. Though I am a hockey fan legitimately, I also find it useful to be aware of the proverbial “water cooler” discussions that sports can allow. I’ve found myself able to “build credibility” among non-Christians as a “normal” guy instead of being one of those bug-eating, honey-smelling outliers. Nothing against the man who baptized the Christ, but we can’t all be him.

I say all this to say that the post initially is quite convincing. The debate that follows is also quite even handed. I just wish to contribute a suggestion and possibility that engaging in the filth of our culture means that we must be aware of it. This slippery-sloped argument calls for all kinds of caution, including a very individualized awareness of personal sins, but it also calls those of us who are “in but not of” the world to find ways to reach out to the “lost” we work, play, and commune with.

Similar to others, I encourage the readers here to limit television time, but to find redemption in the good moments. Not all music is good, but we don’t throw out our radios. Sometimes just knowing songs on the top 40 list give us an opportunity to engage in the culture with the people who are absolutely begging to have communion with us.

(I don’t mean to be a discouragement to those throwing out your televisions though. I just wanted to raise a counterpoint of why, for some of us, television is a useful tool in our efforts at evangelism.)

It was Marie Winn’s The Plug-In Drug that first alerted me to the dangers of the beast, and when our first-born, at age two, asked to watch Sesame Street at at time when the television was off, I said, “That’s it. No more.” Had the decision been mine alone, I think I would have discarded the television set altogether, and certainly that would have been the easiest course. What we did instead — because my husband was not quite ready to give it up himself — was to make it less convenient. At first we moved the TV to a room away from the main traffic of the household; later we put it on a shelf with doors that remained closed most of the time. Out of sight, out of mind. We also never had cable, and reception was not that great, and the TV screen was small.

Our first concern was for the effect of watching television on our growing children, so we instituted some pretty strict non-watching rules. This was not difficult for the children, since we started when they were young enough not to have developed an addiction. At this stage it’s much harder on mom than on the kids, because anesthetizing lively preschoolers with an “educational” television program sounds like a guilt-free way to grab a precious half-hour of peace. I’m standing here today to tell you that removing that option — and thus forcing yourself to help your children develop the ability to entertain themselves — is one of the greatest gifts you can give to your future self.

And your kids? The benefits of growing up free from a television addiction far outweigh any social harm that comes from not having TV as a conversation-starter. (Our children became quite adept at picking up enough information about TV shows from their friends’ conversations to be able to hold their own without ever seeing the shows themselves.) Even long ago when our children were young there were one or two high-quality shows available, but we soon discovered that even a half hour a day of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood was better filled with real-life activities.

It’s also important to point out that, when it comes to creating or avoiding a TV addiction in children, it matters little whether the show is broadcast, cable/satellite, VCR/DVD, or online. We do our children no favors by calling them “TV free” yet popping in a movie every afternoon so we can fix dinner without interruption.

And yet…and yet…. If the only way to avoid the ravages of the beast were to destroy it altogether, I would do so. Taming the beast, however, may have greater benefits. Our youngest’s lifelong love of opera began when she was 10 years old and we let her stay up — wide-eyed and astonished — to watch the four-day PBS presentation of Wagner’s entire Ring Cycle. Performances were meant to be watched, and if they remain true to the original television and movie productions give us cultural opportunities often out of our reach in real life. (My definition of “true to the original” is admittedly hazy. I’d call Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V a great, accessible version for neophytes, even if it omits parts of the play. But the movie adaptation of The Lord of the Rings fails miserably to capture the book, perhaps because the book was not meant to be performed in the first place.)

Television is also great, as was mentioned, at providing an entryway to books and further investigation of a subject. Ken Burns’ treatment of the Civil War succeeded where friends, family, and all my history teachers failed, overcoming my lack of the Y chromosome that seems to give interest to studies of war. “Educational TV” may be somewhat of an oxymoron, but a little, at the right time, can be invaluable.

I could go on — discussing the value of armchair travel as preparation for the real thing, for example — but the point is made. Television and its cohorts (movies, DVDs, computers, video games) I dare to say, are the hot peppers of life: In small amounts they enhance the experience; in greater amounts, they wash out all other flavors; overused, they destroy the senses and wreak havoc on the whole system.

Brett is quite right that one of my primary concerns is the life of the household, as the core of all our human relationships. A second concern is our ability to respond with love to the natural world, which I think is not only good for us as human beings, but also is what constitutes love of the Creator.

And so Mark is right to raise the question whether the internet is not equally problematic. Clearly it can be, and I think that was a concern for everyone who agreed to start up this site and provide its content. I would entirely respect the decision of anyone to have neither TV nor computer. While the internet can be very useful, and requires a more active engagement (your eyes actually move across the screen to read things, to take just the minimal difference), it still, in my judgment, damages body and soul and often encroaches on better uses of time. If I did not have a job that requires me to be connected, I probably would get rid of it, with apologies to fellow Porch denizens. On balance, I think involvement with this site has been worth the drawbacks, but I have not yet reached a final judgement on that point.

And this brings us to the question of the medium itself. Here finally I have found something about which I can heartily disagree with my friend Sabin. Yes, the culture is a huge problem, but the culture has in so many ways resulted from television that I can’t see this as a mitigating consideration in any way. Television more than anything has made the consumer and banal-sensationalist ethos invade deep into our homes and minds and reshape them from the inside.

To expand a little on its effects on habits of attention, I found one of Mander’s points utterly compelling. Television watching is intrinsically boring: motionless staring at a rectangle of light at a fixed distance. Producers try to make it captivating to keep you hooked, and learn much of their techniques from the admen who have loads of money to devote to studying the effects on us. Thus there is some technical effect every few seconds to give us something new to follow (shift of camera, sound effect). This habituates us, way down in our nervous systems, to find real life boring, because it is not like this. (The link Will provides is good evidence of this.) In the quiet of conversation or of a walk through the neighborhood, we ourselves have to work in real life to recognize what it is that we are not noticing but is already present.

Thus, while I will readily agree that on rare occasions TV brings us a package of some new and interesting info (though the way it is packaged necessarily involves drastic reductions of the real content), I am not ready to concede, for example, that nature shows help us to better experience nature. Although they seem more contemplative in pace compared to the speed of technical effects in other programming, the difference is slight when you compare both to the texture of real life.

As for connecting us to others in conversation, having listened to such “conversation” as an outsider, even among very intelligent persons, I almost never find that it is about anything of significance. The problem really is that one feels like an alien among those who have a common point of reference and enthusiasm. So if you are not fortunate enough to have a circle of acquaintance who have something more substantial filling and enlivening their imaginations than what television has streamed into it, you have to decide how you feel about being a social alien. The compensation, it seems to me, is that you are not so alienated from the things that are most important.

After the kids were grown and I retired; my husband and I subscribed to TV cable for awhile. Eventually we cancelled the service because we didn’t watch it that often.

The computer/internet? You’d have to destroy our computers and pry the mouse out of our hands!

It’s wonderful for inducing sleep quickly and equally useful in creating a comprehensive data base concerning the most ridiculous aspects of modern consumer culture.

When we rebuke the television, we should just as well defame the mirror.

Those film studies of people’s minimally changing facial expressions while in the act of watching the telly should tell anyone all they need to know about how much actual value the beaming charade is.

I watch it a bit myself……usually things the rest of the family find alarmingly odd but I will jump headlong into the more mainstream output , including the comic thirty minutes of network news because I feed on frustration, rage, disquiet and consigned hilarity like a Mekong Water Buffalo gorges on riverine grasses. They’re a belligerent sort too. They also produce a lot of bullsh*t.