Television Reloaded

摘要

FORTY-FOUR YEARS AGO, WHEN NEWTON MI-now famously described television as a vast wasteland, he might have hit the bull's-eye on the wasteland part. But he didn't know from vast. TV back then--a few black-and-white channels with a test pattern after midnight--was a sleepy three-light town where everybody hung out at the same dull places because there wasn't I much else going on. As monochrome moved to color, and we got pay TV, more channels, remote controls, VCRs and cussin' on HBO, television sprawled much wider. But compared with what's coming, our 2005 experience is only half vast.