Newton Minow's Speech 'Vast Wasteland'

n Newton Minow's speech, "Vast Wasteland", he ends warning that "The power of instantaneous sight and sound is without precedent in mankind's history. This is an awesome power. It has limitless capabilities for good – and for evil. And it carries with it awesome responsibilities — responsibilities which you and [the government] cannot escape . . . " In this statement Minow makes an excellent point, perhaps even unintentionally foreshadowing what was to come in America with the rise of mass media, the point that people can be persuaded to action by nothing more than a mere television.

Although disturbing, this notion has played out in America at an alarming rate, in essence brainwashing the majority of our population. We see it all the time, people in an uproar over events that have zero effect on them just because they saw it on the television, or when people obsess over

For example, a study done by Herbert Krugman shows that when one watches television, brain activity switches from being primarily on the left to instead the right. This is significant information because the left hemisphere of the brain is generally regarded as being the side in which most logical thought takes place and where information is critically analyzed where as the right hemisphere does not analyze as much of the information but instead acts on emotional responses. Also when the switch occurs from the hemispheres the brain releases endorphins, a morphine compound produced naturally by the body that has been linked to forming addictions to the actions that cause it to be released. This makes not only TV highly influential but highly