Recursivity

Yesterday I attended a baseball game in Buffalo, NY: the Bisons versus the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs. There was, as usual, a big video scoreboard in centerfield.

So this clueless quote from Neil Postman, recently posted on Doug Groothuis's blog, is appropriate:

"Media may now be serving as a surrogate for reality, and a preferred one at that. At stadiums throughout the country, huge TV screens have been installed so that spectators can experience the game through TV because TV is better than being there, even when you are there."

Postman has got to be one of the most overrated media commentators ever.

As I commented to my young son, in many ways, watching baseball at a stadium is a much better experience today than it was when I attended my first game in 1967.

It's not that "TV is better than being there" or that it is "a surrogate for reality", as Postman claims - whatever that means.

It's that a big screen offers more information than the scoreboard of 1967: you get the batter's average and other statistics; you get a reminder of what happened earlier in the game when that batter was up; and you get instant replays of interesting plays you might not have fully appreciated or understood the first time around.

Postman never really understood media; his observations are generally self-important, trite, and ignorant.