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February 27, 2006
It’s a
strange memory, but a vivid memory. Christmas afternoon 1964, my
sister, 11, and I, 13, sat in the family room watching news. Not
because we wanted to watch the news. But it was the only show my
father would let us watch on our new Christmas color television set.
It was the only show in color.
Color
television had been available since 1953. The first commercial
television program on color film was an episode of Dragnet, followed
by such milestones as a live telecast of the Tournament of Roses
parade the following month. As with all firsts, history tracks the
first color broadcast of a president (Dwight Eisenhower in June,
1955), the first color coverage of the World Series (Dodgers vs.
Yankees in September, 1955), and the first colorcast cartoons (the
Flintstones and the Jetsons in fall, 1962).
Yet, my family
along with most other American families continued to watch television
in black and white. The first RCA color sets cost $995, the
equivalent of over $6,500 today. In 1954, it was enough to buy a car,
and nearly enough to buy a modest house.
By the
mid-1950s, every company with the exception of RCA stopped
manufacturing color televisions, and few produced color programming.
Yet, losing some $65 million over a decade, RCA persisted in
developing and marketing the technology.
The premier of
Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color in September, 1961, was a
turning point. It was a magical experience to see the peacock’s
tail unfold in red, orange, green and yellow.
Finally, in 1964, the tide turned, and RCA began to profit handsomely
from its investment in color television. It had taken 25 years for
color television to go from its earliest prototypes to mass
acceptance. According to Alex Magoun, director of the Sarnoff library
holding RCA history, this is about the time every new technology takes
to really catch on.
Today, a
teenager is probably unable to conceive of a world where we would not
be able to watch live color coverage of downhill skiing at the
Turin Olympic Games from 20 different camera angles. In a
child’s mind, television has always been here. Like snowflakes,
pine trees, and sledding, color television is and was and always has
been.
In the short
span of one human life, it is hard to maintain the long view.
Technology is easy to follow, with every detail recorded many times
over in tech manuals and corporate profit and loss statements.
But televisions,
computers, and air travel are not the only “new fangled” inventions of
modern man. Even our ways of thinking are marked by radical
shifts that we have lost track of.
One mental shift
has made an impact every bit as dramatic on modern life as color
television. It is hard to conceive of a university without a
department of sociology, but in fact, no sociologists even existed to
set sail and land on Plymouth Rock with the Pilgrims in 1620.
Sociology is actually a relatively new
academic
discipline which evolved in the early 19th century. It
usually concerns itself with the
social rules
and
processes
that bind and separate people not only as
individuals,
but as members of
associations,
groups,
and
institutions.
Motivated by an interest in our behavior as social beings,
sociologists began to quantify any number of human actions, allowing
these academicians to perform their intricate analysis of short
contacts
between anonymous individuals on the street and to expand their
theories to the broad study of
global social
processes.
A related trend in sociology, emerging since the late 1970s, attempted
to make it a more “applied” discipline, applicable in areas such as
non-profit organizations and nursing homes. The results of
sociological research have been used by educators, lawmakers,
administrators, and others interested in resolving social problems and
formulating public policy, through areas such as survey research,
evaluation research, methodological assessment, and public sociology.
In other words, if we want to know what’s wrong…and if we want to know
how to fix what’s wrong…ask a sociologist.
So, what was the world like before sociologists began to engineer and
quantify human behavior? How did humans seek solutions to human
problems? How did we organize life?
This is not idle speculation. As a nation, we have nearly
stopped thinking and acting unless we can open our briefcase and pull
out a 3-inch file of social statistics and research to support our
views. Consider the following.
Solomon’s wisdom is often cited in a famous incident in
which two women came before him with a baby, each claiming to the the
mother. Solomon ordered the child be cut in half, and by observing
each woman’s reaction, determined the true mother. Today, we have
case workers, MSWs for sure, who interview the entire family and
neighborhood, cite studies on mother love and bonding, and make their
final report in triplicate.
Or in September, 2004, behavioral research on 1,792
adolescents proved that teenagers who watch a lot of television with
sexual content are twice as likely to engage in intercourse than those
who watch few such programs. Katie Couric’s reaction was a brief,
“Duh?”
King Solomon was a bit more expressive. Above all else,
guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Put away
perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. Let
your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.
(Prov 4:23-25 NIV)
For all of our numbers and studies and statistics and analysis, have
we really advanced beyond the centuries-old wisdom that informed men’s
hearts and guided their steps? And is it just possible that
social scientists have found ways to add and subtract research that
would justify why a lemming should follow his brother over the cliff?
Sociology has not always existed. Thankfully, great minds and
human wisdom are not modern inventions. They are, they were,
they always have been. Even before sociology.
October 29, 2004
Food for the Brain
September 10, 2004
Duh
See Archives
for more past editorials.
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