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Science and Broadcasting

1930; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 126; Issue: 3183 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/126673a0

1476-4687

E. J. Holmyard,

Climate Change Communication and Perception

IT has been rather bitterly remarked that the most attractive feature of a wireless set is that there is no necessity to have one. Many people, indeed, hold that the violation of domestic privacy by the telephone, and more particularly by the wireless set, is a thing to be deplored; and this attitude is by no means confined to those unappreciative of the benefits science has lavished upon us. Dislike of broadcasting is frequently based upon the feeling that the public is far too prone to take its opinions and its entertainment ready made—something to be bought and paid for as one would buy a box of cigarettes. There is good cause for this feeling. The popular Press, for example, is in many ways admirable; but it would be idle to deny that the enormous circulations of modern newspapers inevitably tend forcibly to mould and stereotype public opinion, while the very fact that they cater for the masses necessitates (or apparently necessitates) a comparatively low level of intellectual outlook. The mental indolence of much of the nation is accompanied by an emotional or æsthetic indolence in choice of amusement. Instead of amusing or entertaining themselves, many people prefer to pay to be amused, and generally select that form of amusement which involves the least effort on their own part. “I like to go to the cinema once a week,” said Miss Pinnegar in “The Lost Girl”. “It’s instruction, you take it all in at a glance, all you need to know, and it lasts you for a week. You can get to know everything about people's actual lives from the cinema.” Although cinemagoers are now much too sophisticated to imagine that the film bears any sort of relation to “people’s actual lives”, it yet remains true that “you take it all in at a glance”, and if your amusement is solely of this soporific character, taste for intellectual pleasure cannot fail to atrophy.