IF IT ISN'T IN PERSPECTIVE YET, LET'S TAKE IT THERE

I once heard a mind blowing stat that by the end of my high school years I would have watched close to 17,000 hours of television. To me that stat was a clear example that life was somewhat trivial. I thought " What the fuck man?" I was 17 when I heard this and honestly I had no clue.

What I have realizing  is that TV has an incredible amount of power, the power to change life as we know it and society as we see it. Let's put it into a serious perspective here. When FDR died it was a couple of days before the country was completely aware of that fact. When JFK was assassinated it was around in the same day.

Television the medium that gave us Watergate and the eventual fall of a president. Yes, today television gives us a lot of shit that's come around as the result of praise lavished upon the mediocre. Television began the quest of making the world a smaller place, social media has made it an art, but television started it. To put it in perspective, what was once an invention that served as a form of entertainment is today the tool that brought the world together.

It's television that gives us a little to talk about in the water cooler, something to argue about with politics, and the things that bring us together.

YOU JUST NEVER REALLY KNOW

A long time ago in a black and white galaxy far away a man by the name of Edward R. Murrow was introducing the world to his new and revolutionary show known as Person to Person. The show made Edward R. Murrow the first real celebrity interviewer and added to his already polarizing legend. The show itself employed remote interviews, which at the time were quite rare. It has been nearly 60 years since person to person first aired and now we have social media to give us our own person to person moments with people we don't really know.

With the advent of Twitter, Skype, Facebook, and many others we seem to have the ability for that person to person feel. The truth is that just like the days of Murrow's show we are living in a time when no matter how open we seem to be there are still secrets that lurk deeply in the closet. In a way the show Person to Person laid the groundwork for social media. The show was proof positive that distance between points could be closed. Murrow interviewed everyone from Fidel Castro to JFK to Marilyn Monroe. Today, nearly six decades later, we seem to feel closer to celebrities, leaders, and groups.

While the secrets that we keep only manage to come out either post mortem or in some dramatic way there is something to be said for the fact that social media was a seedling for so long. Perhaps it's a stretch to connect Murrow to social media but if you really study it there is some sense to that. Murrow was on to something and while it may have long been relegated to the status of a valuable relic it's fair to say it had a serious impact. Next time you see something new don't be surprised if it's what manages to spur a big revolution.