Touchable Past & Future

"I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television -- of that I am quite sure."

E.B. White
from "Removal from Town"
Harper's Magazine (October 1938)

I read this today and then glanced at the date. That was 70 years ago. Think about it, 70 years!!
I like to call that our touchable past.

If you are 20 or older you have known someone with a personal connection to 1938. The degrees of separation may vary but it is an understandable passage of time. It can be perceived with little effort.
If you are 35 it is simply "another one " (unit of time) of your lifetimes. You probably even know someone who was born around that time.
If you are 45 you may know someone who remembers 1938.

E.B. White was right. Television has affected us, as a culture, in ways perhaps unfathomable to someone in 1938.
In the year 2078 how will we (or our grandchildren) fill in the blank, "I believe ________ was the test of that time period."

The Internet is an obvious answer. But I think our big test is increasingly violent video games. It is easy to foresee "wii" (is that how you spell it?) creating an assassin or some other killing game. Our current desensitization could only escalate with marketing like that.
Last year Pope Benedict XVI asked us to "Change the Game". He asked us to put aside toy weapons.

In the year that has followed I have only noticed an increase in toy weapons. I think one could safely say that violent video games fall into the category of violent toys.