Television

Television must be the most popular past times for human beings today. Just about everyone watches televisions and just about every house has a television set. Everyday and night people glue the eyes on the sets watching their shows. So television exerts a very large influence on us.

The uses of television are many. As a means of communication, there is virtually nothing to match it. With it we can watch a football match thousands of miles away by the mere flick of a switch, in full colour and high fidelity sound. News that took months to travel from one place to another now takes just a fraction of a second, and minus the distorting factor of human messengers. The impact of this improved communication on our lives are great indeed. Used with discretion, TV can provide us with much knowledge. Used carelessly, TV can reduce us to non-thinking entities.

Via TV, manufacturers are able to reach out to the consumers more effectively. A couple of clips in between programmes are welcome breaks, but to watch clip after clip for more than five minutes at a stretch is just too much. What is worse, an advertisement clip coming on right in the middle of a program is definitely an abuse. It is like having something forced down our throats, in addition to mental jolt we feel when the continuity of the program is interrupted.

TV is an invaluable educational tool. It enables the education planners to coordinate and inform the school children about the requirements of various subjects. Elsewhere, TV is used both as a surveillance tool and an eye in inaccessible places. For example in deep sea exploration, TV is used to reach places where no man can go.

To go into details on every use and abuse of TV would require volumes of books. Used with care, it is a boon to mankind. Used carelessly it can be a curse instead.