Watching television requires no skills and develops no skills. That is why there is no such thing as remedial television-watching.

It is inescapable that every culture must negotiate with technology, whether it does so intelligently or not. A bargain is struck in which technology giveth and technology taketh away.

It is not entirely true that a TV producer or reporter has complete control over the contents of programs. The interests and inclinations of the audience have as much to do with the what is on television as do the ideas of the producer and reporter.

Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?

You can only photograph a fragment of the here and now. The photograph presents the world as object; language, the world as idea.

The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it. People gather bundles of sticks to build bridges they never cross. People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.

A definition is the start of an argument, not the end of one.