[guerrilla]

> a sign of moral/intellectual degradation, and--surprise!--it never really is.

I'm not sure how you'd measure that... Right now there seems to be a heart disease and obesity epidemic, which I understand is primarily due to sugar and processed foods, but I find it hard to believe the massive amounts of TV watching and computer use plays no role in that, if not a significant one.

With TV, there was also the passivity effect, people were just fed a diet of propaganda with little way to do much about it, whereas now at least there's some choice although I'm not sure we're much better off and what the tradeoffs are. Prior to TV and radio, people weren't very educated at all, so it's kind of hard to compare. We don't get the science experiments we need out of natural development.

Then, I can't know but I wonder if a society where more reading and radio wouldn't be better in some important ways.

Then, yeah what if TV is like coffee but a certain kind of Internet use does turn out to be like a more addictive drug...