The screens

There have been four phases, each more intensive, and the inception of the most recent one dates back only fifteen years. Studies of the overall phenomenon figure to start appearing soon.

At the start of every phase there was mostly awe and optimism, but also a touch of apprehension, as the impact was considered.

By 1910 millions of people were going to the movies a couple of times a month; mostly, at first, people who lived in cities. In 1915 The Birth of a Nation indicated what mass media was becoming within mass society.

During the 1950s television brought the screens into every home. A notable academic response was Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media (1964).

Computers at first were accessed by punch cards and electronic keyboards. It was a revelation during the 1970s when you could interact with the mainframe directly via a terminal screen. The screen opened to computers all over the world, at first through the phone lines, during the 1980s. The terminal fronting the internet came into most homes during the 1990s. By the 2000s the typical suburban home had three television screens and two computer screens.

Screens carried around on-person: Blackberry around 2005, iPhone around 2010.

So that’s very recent.

Mass society is problematic. There’s something ultra-pathological about the immediate on-person channel to mass media. There are intimations, but what the problem is is not so obvious that we’ve all become aware of it. I think we’re far from a clear understanding of it: The human-screen interaction. The mass media distraction.