ABSTRACT
Technology has played a significant role in the dialectics of developing and questioning communication philosophies, structures and functions. VCR, videocassette, low-powered broadcasting, and other "small" technologies have been associated with change in communication models. In philosophical and ideological terms, small media technologies promised to counterweight the inadequacies of the established models. Liberals and Marxists alike have admitted that wherever it has been used, television has divided communities between givers and receivers, programmers and watchers, distributors and consumers. The advent of the VCR in the 1970s originally implied the possibility of genuine change. The flexibility of the new technology in terms of playback and off-air recording increased freedom in the choice of contents, distribution, and timing of use and reduced dependence on monopolistic broadcasting sources. The introduction of community television in the kibbutz displayed a significant awareness of model-transplantation problems. The point of departure for recommending the adoption of the medium was a search for the solution of well-defined kibbutz problems.
