ABSTRACT
This book, as we said, is not television. It is a vehicle for an invitation-an invitation to awareness. We will be working to become aware of the nature of our relationship to television and thereby also our relationship to reality, to our society in general, and our self in particular. The current Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso, practices meditation four hours a day. The words media and meditation have a linguistic resonance and kinship. In our experience of the media, we will be exploring how we Americans “do” television watchinghow we practice meditation, television meditation-four hours a day. Current A.C. Nielson television statistics for the average American are four hours a day of focused, attentive, exclusive television watching. Combine that together with the TV set also being “on in the background” of the household for another three hours of unfocused, inattentive presence-of a kind of television ambient noise, or secondhand electronic smoke-and we have a total of seven hours a day of direct and diffuse television presence.
