> What was most striking is that I don't remember TV being so low-key in the culture That is really interesting. For want of a better way to put it, I also agr

> What was most striking is that I don't remember TV being so low-key in the culture That is really interesting. For want of a better way to put it, I also agree that it had a "long-tail" quality to it; it was just implicitly part of the status quo. Communication nowadays seems to be broadly impacted by disproportionate focus on explicit definition, disambiguation, structure, etc, but in such a way that abolishes and shuns implied cohesion. Constantly trying to define and underline the way things should be instead of just getting on with letting things be the way they already are. My current chicken-and-egg "hmm" is whether this came before or after the worldwide obsession around security and safety (which arguably started just before the turn of the century - I once read the "no no stay inside" thing started in America circa 1998). From this perspective I definitely think TV occupied more of the "tribal knowledge" side of written vs implied culture, than it does today - both in terms of production and societal impact. Kind of weird, that; it had more of an impact when it wasn't trying to shoehorn and corral. Heh. I lastly wouldn't say that TV "crept up in importance" so much as turned into a vacuous foghorn contest to see who can bellow the hottest air the furthest :P (AU here, aka UK Lite Edition)