Issue38 [Jet]小组第十二次作业 第六篇I，欢迎拍砖

goldin2008UID: 2140085

TOPIC: ISSUE38 - "In the age of television, reading books is not as important as it once was. People can learn as much by watching television as they can by reading books."
WORDS: 570          TIME: 00:45:00          DATE: 2008-2-26 19:40:44

In this era of rapid social and technological development leading to increasing life complexity, television actually could provide us with various perspectives and thus lead us to a colorful world. However, book is still a good means of learning. Both positive and negative effects among persons in society call for a balance in which there are both television and books.

Admittedly, in certain cases television has advantages over books for imparting knowledge and information. A video record is more accurate and convincing than a book or other written records. This is true especially when it comes to documenting experiences and moving pictures. It is difficult for anyone, no matter how keen an observer, to recount objective detail such events as the winning champion in a soccer match, movies, or the beautiful scene in a forest. Because a unique natural sence is too beautiful to be described through languages or words. And a tour guideline brochure cannot inform about the sunshine, air, scene, or inn conditions nearly as effectively as a video.

Television media, as a means of staying abread of current affairs, provide news as quickly as possible, in order to appeal to the widest viewing audience. The result is that viewers receive latest, complete, and various information, and therefore could rely on television to develop insightful and informed opinions about important social and political issues. For instance, the new issues and technology are easy to be reported through television, while need more time to be analyzed, evaluated, and are not easy to be printed in books, let alone introduced and spread through books.

However, in other areas books are advantageous to and more appropriate than television. For example, book is of use in documenting a person’s subjective state of mind, statistical or other quantitative information. Although television can show us what people are doing, we do not know what they are thinking. Again, television can show us the violence and horror of a war, but cannot tell us how many people lose their lives or survive. And books are more portable than television especially when you are standing in a queue for a bus. Indeed, to the extent that it is important to save power source and protect environment, book is inherently superior to television as a documentary tool. Books readily enable readers to review and cross-reference material, while televison media do not. The selective review of video record is very difficult for viewers, especially compared with a printed resource. Browsing among books is a pleasurable sensory experience for many people, an experience that watching television, or other video media cannot duplicate. In the final analysis, books can facilitate learning in certain ways that television does not and cannot. The major issue has to do with how well television and books serve their respective fuctions. If we recognize this point, we would give them appropriate places, and thus make them act vital roles in the development of society.

To sum up, without television, our society becomes not so vivid and eventually bald. Without a society that recognizes the importance of books, individuals cannot advance, let alone the society. Thus, while our form of society necessitates television, books and other written records, are equally vital. The optimal approach is keeping a balance between television media and books. Because only in the way the combination of them gives can individuals and our society learn well and thus recognize the world altogether.