. . . Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world.

The idea of taking what people call the 'entertainment culture' as a focus of study, including historical perspective, is not a bad idea.

It is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions.

Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and comercials.

Embedded in every technology there is a powerful idea, sometimes two or three powerful ideas. Like language itself, a technology predisposes us to favor and value certain perspectives and accomplishments and to subordinate others. Every technology has a philosophy, which is given expression in how the technology makes people use their minds, in how it codifies the world, in which of our senses it amplifies, in which of our emotional and intellectual tendencies it disregards.

I don't think any of us can do much about the rapid growth of new technology. A new technology helps to fuel the economy, and any discussion of slowing its growth has to take account of economic consequences. However, it is possible for us to learn how to control our own uses of technology.

For the message of television as metaphor is not only that all the world is a stage but that the stage is located in Las Vegas, Nevada.