Yeah, TV totally drives people apart. 

--

Entire original skit is a classic.

--

You two are really both right. Those skits work as both critique and as proof of concept: we have a nostalgic attachment to family time watching those shows (and myriad others) because the work of centering the life of the private sphere around mass market commodities had already been completed by the time we began our childhoods. I think that television had a large part in that, for sure. Brecht thought as much. Adorno and Horkheimer put a lot of the blame on popular music. Irving Howe and Frederic Wertham both blamed comic books. Saul Bellow blamed the declining cultural importance of the novel.

Kids in my generation got sad about the deaths of Optimus Prime and Littlefoot's Mom because a weekend theater trip or an evening movie night was co-terminus with family time and almost no one saw any problem with that. (If not Littlefoot's Mom and Optimus Prime, then what about "Jurassic Bark"...) That debate had already ended and it was perfectly fine to watch In Living Color with your brother and see who did the best impression of Fire Marshall Bill.

It seemed like there were limits then though. Cinema, drive-in theaters, the arcades, laser tag, the mall: away from home, our relationship to mass market commodities had a relationship to a shared commons or some form of minimally class-gated collectivity. In that way, it mirrored our experience at home. We experienced commodities with family; we experienced commodities with friends or at least with members of our community. We had to put a fucking quarter on the machine to call 'next'.

The problem with texting, video games, laptops, smartphones, etc etc - digitally-enabled mobile devices coupled with wireless access - is that they took the previous conquest of the private sphere and expanded it to the rest of the public sphere and public life. And it did it in a way that no longer required any interpersonal interaction whatsoever. Now, assholes can't stop at a stoplight without checking their Facebook. Shopping can be handled through Amazon, or iTunes, or Priceline. No one needs to have a conversation in line because they're staring at their screens. Groceries can come by Peapod or Amazon Pantry. We might not even have to see postal workers anymore soon if mail drones start to catch on.

Things like TiVo, Online Piracy, Video on Demand, and Streaming Services have even to a large extent ruptured our shared temporality that television previously carefully constructed around watching things at the same time on the same evening. Except for maybe sports broadcasts and superhero films.

You guys must have zero content in your govt. regulated worlds.

Reading can't replace this:

I confess: I did buy the complete (at the time) set of David Attenborough DVDs  and do occasionally watch some

No Looney Tunes, Animaniacs or South Park?!  How would we ever learn about the Japanese otherwise?

It's true that I do miss The Simpsons!

I was watching some TV at my host's place during my UK holiday last month. Notable was Eastenders  for its sub-Hardy/Conrad dire and twisted themes in which all is for the worst in the worst of all possible worlds, and nobody can escape their dreadful family/personal destiny. Coronation Street, at least, allowed its characters an occasional happy moment. Masterchef was good!

Don't know if I would watch more TV in UK, but I don't think so. I had almost given it up before I left. I don't find much on Indian TV on the rare occasions when I turn it on. I was never much of a movie watcher, and I dislike Iindian movies a lot (I hate the music!).

However, all this absence of TV in my life doesn't lead to lack of screens and electronics. I sit in front of the internet instead, and it feeds me news, information, entertainment and social life.

No one has nominated S-D (audio) dacs, esp Sabre!?
Class-D (audio) amplifiers, anyone? 

If that thread would have opened in HF, i bet vacuum tubes would have been among top ten posts.
''Genie, make yourself disappear from the pages of history, lol'' 

A few years back my answer to the genie would have been ''Facebook''. But it seems to bring some positive traits to society lately. Still, world would be better place if those kind of social-media things never existed.

If the genie would let me think some time i would ask ''can you bring back monarchy?'', muhahhaa 

But honestly, i wouldn't want to condemn any single technology. Thanks Ultra for bringing 1984 up, it's the people and politics that make some technologies sinful and annoying.