HDTV is clearly becoming the number one item on everyone's wish list. One is led to wonder by this phenomenon if HDTV is going to have an important role in society. Every technology from the wheel on has made enormous differences in how we live and perceive life. The fresh-in-our minds industrial revolution connected those wheels to motors and a form of rapid transportation was born. Many said at the close of the millennium that the auto had been the most significant contribution to mankind as it made us mobile with our individual destinations leading the way. The level of commerce and creature comforts available today are inconceivable without the motorized vehicle in service.
Communications technologies must rank high in terms of producing social progress. We just learned more about our own prejudices than at other time in history by observing ourselves on radio and then television. The tyranny of dictators finally looses its grip when enough citizens are made aware of the truth through their communications facilities. Those who give political credit to one party or the other for undermining the Berlin Wall also give credit to communication technologies that allowed the dissenting voices to be heard and seen. Nothing could be done to stop those freedom-flavored signals from reaching some kind of playing device.
Now we enter the HDTV era. What does it mean to civilization? Is it just another distraction or is it a tool to lead us to a more grace filled life? Until we have a clear answer to this question we are likely to see the outfitting for it as a big painful cost with no account in the chart of accounts for a write off. But if we agree and see to it that HDTV contributes to our social welfare--to the benefit of civilization--then we have a public account, no matter how privately managed, in the same category as our investments are for defense and education. We pay for those much needed things without question, though we may ask why so much? Can we see HDTV filling some important role in our lives? Is it worth a great deal? While I certainly am not the last word on the subject a few of ny earlier words said that HDTV is a benefit to civilization even though a cost to each of the individual citizens. The whole is raised higher than any individual could be and so is the tide raised for all boats. Is that how it is? Is HDTV really an important big thing? But, hey, wait a minute. It's just prettier pictures, right? What good does a well adjusted pair of eyes do for us? Anyone who has suffered from a vision loss only to gain it back have volumes to say about this.
I was one. I temporarily lost my left eye due to a detached retina. It was re-attached but not without some permanent vision loss. The right eye took some misguided sympathy trip for its partner and decided to severely cloud up with an early cataract. It seemed that my vision was going to fail me altogether. I don't mind telling you I had to curse a few times at the encroaching darkness. The beauty I had known was only becoming a memory. Even though I could see objects well enough to drive (though I should have given it up) the loss of vision proved to be a degrading fact in my life. I missed the vibrant colors (then dulled as if mixed with brown) and the tactile textures that so enrich our vision. I continued my work in HDTV even though I realized that I would never see it again as it should be seen. My world was reduced to this dimmed down and unclear view of life. I would have to make due with what was left. I never appreciated the blind nor deaf among us as I did then and do now. It was stressful, but I had to overcome.
Let me right here and now sing to the rooftops the praises of modern medicine and its technology. Without it my vision would be no better than "NTSC". But technique and training created a miracle and my right eye has been restored to better than when I was a teenager. I see with it sharply in a full range of luscious colors. Thank you doctors for going forward with your profession and its tools. Now I can see HDTV again in its full beauty and can tell you that life for me is better this way. So, my idea (and hopefully yours too) saying that HDTV is good for civilization is based on this quite personal observation that it makes life better. If that is true for one person I ask if it is not then true for all who have reasonably good vision? If the accumulation of the good that it does is measurable in the individual how great does it become when all of civilization is connected to it? Does not a joyful home produce more acts of kindness in a day than one which is pounded by negative circumstances?
Let me suggest that with HDTV we have a new and warmer hearth in the home. We can venture to every land on earth with HDTV being our extended eyes and ears. We live with people through this electronic domain until we are familiar with and understand their cultures. It was said not long ago on a C-SPAN panel of Arab professors teaching various parts of the Islamic culture here in the United States that the ONLY thing that is going to resolve the great differences between our cultures is greater mutual understanding. I can't think of a grander use for HDTV than to provide a greater mutual understanding...at just the right distance. Without better understanding many feel that we are doomed from a conflict without end. It is said by our generals that the war on terrorism will last decades at a cost of a trillion or more dollars. That is our money. Can we not benefit from doing all we can to enhance mutual understanding between conflicting cultures? The leading experts say so. That being the case -- to a greater or lesser extent -- shouldn't we take some of the billions of dollars that we must spend to crush our opposition and apply them to an intelligent campaign to win their deepest understanding, at least enough so that arms and death is not the only way? .Or, do we prefer a more dramatic fix that comes from superior armed force? For those who believe there is an alternative to the strategy of brute force I ask you to look seriously at HDTV as a tool for advancing mutual understanding among all people. Is this goal I suggest an overstatement of the potential of HDTV and one in which you differ? If so let me ask you this question: Can a constant connection with the beautiful and good influence us to becoming better people? Or, does nothing induce us to become better people?
Responses welcome...
Dale Cripps
