The Idiot Box—Attacking
“Smart” Televisions
The glass slabs are everywhere, and they seem to want to obnoxiously and rudely
isolate us from the rest of society. We stare at our smartphone screens, texting someone afar
while neglecting the warmth of an in-person conversation with friends who are next to us. The
dopamine hit from our phones buzzing in our pockets has become far too difficult to ignore.
We must know what fresh notifications are waiting for us—it doesn’t matter if they’re a result
of someone we hardly know on Facebook merely “liking” an insignificant photograph. Admit-
tedly, first-world societies have noticed how the glass-slab display of the smartphone is mak-
ing our interactions soulless and less human. It is negatively influencing our behavior and
respect of one another’s presence, and we are taking notice. It is increasingly becoming
frowned upon to play with our smartphones in meetings, on dates, and during important con-
versations. There are areas of interaction that seem permanently obsolete, however. Look
around the next time you are in an elevator or a neighborhood bar and notice the number of
people with their heads down, staring at the glaring glass slabs of their smartphones. The
romanticism of striking up a meaningful conversation with a stranger seems diminished.
The smartphone is only a recent example of how the glass display can influence society
and our interactions with one another. We will pick on these devices a little later, but the
award for the most influential and distracting display of all goes to the television. It is the TV,
nicknamed “the idiot box,” that has shaped the influence of technology on our society for the
last few decades. Pervasive as it is, an element of disdain is evident in the nickname. Try to
start a conversation about a recent TV show at a cocktail party, and you will quickly run into
someone in the group who will claim ignorance of the topic because he is proud not to own a
TV. Some of this disdain is with merit. There are far too many instances of parents abusing
TV to distract their children with content that dulls their intellectual capacities. There is little
argument against the hypothesis that children who watch TV for hours a day are being robbed
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