Electromagnetic Culturebox

I suppose that when someone is criticized for being “glued to their phone” it is a bit like when people were criticized for sitting in front of the television. Certainly with respect to having your attention focused on a screen, the televisual medium, and possibly also having your brain dissolved by all the inanities there. Smartphones involve social contacts and access to a far wider variety of information, so they involve a lot more than what television does, but there are many similarities in the video medium and the appearance of people and events there. Television never really took on the mantle of art in the way that the original moving pictures did. Photography and cinema sort of seemed like new art forms (and technologies) at first, whereas the (perhaps even more technical and specially involving electricity) forms of radio and television and the internet were too mass-distributed from the beginning? Anyway, there is also the factor of television being a huge aspect of and kind of a bearer of culture, such that people have to have some connection to it in order to understand the culture. Things like commercials which everyone complains about are at least as important as the rest of the content and make that content possible; they are among the best-known cultural touchstones, or experiences, so that in order to participate fully in the culture, experience with these commercials is essential.