The Menace that is Video – By: Kulbir Singh
THE MENACE THAT IS VIDEO
The amalgam of videos and televisions has brought about vexing results in many homes. The need at the moment is to see through it’s effects as it has crippled a majority of our population. The VCR, when plugged into the socket of a television has a tantalizing effect on the otherwise TV-resistant persons.
The combination of video and television is a direct intrusion on the constructive part of our lives. People have become so enchanted by these home-seepers that they are, on an increasing pace, being restrained from the actual face of life.
All video-TV lords tend to stick within a few feet of their time – wasting apparatus. After sometime they become ‘’un-aware people’’ – unaware of the important realities and facts of lives that traversed through the long hours which they spent with their eyes glued to television.
Children of today, especially, are becoming victims of this disease. They are being steered through their years in a wasteful manner. Is it sane to believe that the children, in whose hands the future is, can direct the course of coming generations when about one-sixth to one-tenth of their lives are spent with television and video? We should not expect much from these poor children as after some years all that would be there with them to narrate would be movies, actors and their dress-fads.
People need to become aware. How nice it would be if instead of frittering money on VCR’s and VCP’s, we invest our resources in a purposeful manner! Would we not call it a wise man’s advice that we gift our children with computers and half-a-dozen floppy diskettes or take them to educational sprees more often, instead of buying these boxes?
It is desirable in the interest of humanity that we all stay in our best visions and devote one minute after three hours of movie-time that how these three hours have helped as, if so, by any chance.
With Reader’s Digest averring that “it is a small world until it comes to driving from the airport”, only a devotional urge emerging from us can direct us to not let the children be in front of a VCR for these long hours. Why not plug a computer in a TV rather than plug a video in it? Won’t the concatenation of TV and computer be a better option?
Today when we gaze at scores of sectors of everyday life which can be developed by computers, the growing need for computer experts is felt. We, surely enough, do not have any problem in getting computers or software pertaining to any of their applications, but we do lack in quantum of computer managers, perfect in the art and style of computer knowledge.
Undoubtedly, we have a big potential to solve our problem. In my humble opinion, today’s children and also yesterday’s should be taught about life’s challenges and needs. Let ‘’We are the world!’’ prevail, lest we should forget that it is better to mend at a late hour than never to mend at all!
Love to share the original newspaper in which this article was published in 1988.
By: Kulbir Singh (Published in Indian Express on May 7, 1988.)