ABSTRACT
It is often said that television has altered our world. In the same way, people often speak of a new world, a new society, a new phase of history, being created-‘brought about’—by this or that new technology: the steam-engine, the automobile, the atomic bomb. Most of us know what is generally implied when such things are said. But this may be the central difficulty: that we have got so used to statements of this general kind, in our most ordinary discussions, that we can fail to realise their specific meanings.
