What would the world be like without television?

So, what if television was never invented or never became popular? How will this affect the world today? Would it be better if there were no television or would it be about the same?
 
It’s not really possible not to invent.

Does Not prevent us from considering this scenario.

However without TV I imagine the world would rely on traditional forms of entertainment, theater, radio, cinema etc. However the big problem is Television introduced a wholly new idea, it was the first mass information platform. For the first time people were able to learn through a very powerful medium, sight. The phrase 'I'll believe it when I see it' could pretty much sum up a huge chunk of our current learning experience, you can still learn by reading and by listening but thats just taking on someone elses understanding, when you see something for yourself the understanding is entirely your own and much easier to process. Television was in effect the first social media.
 
Does Not prevent us from considering this scenario.

However without TV I imagine the world would rely on traditional forms of entertainment, theater, radio, cinema etc. However the big problem is Television introduced a wholly new idea, it was the first mass information platform. For the first time people were able to learn through a very powerful medium, sight. The phrase 'I'll believe it when I see it' could pretty much sum up a huge chunk of our current learning experience, you can still learn by reading and by listening but thats just taking on someone elses understanding, when you see something for yourself the understanding is entirely your own and much easier to process. Television was in effect the first social media.

Exactly. Television had big affect for people's opinion about Vietnam War. And without television Moon landing hardly has so big propaganda effect.
 
no internet.

there is far less push to develop monitors.
there may be limited use of monitors in business & military applications, but would be hugely expensive. CRT development would be seriously delayed.
Not to speak of lcd screens etc.
So a personal computer becomes rather impractical.
 

Flubber

Banned
Does Not prevent us from considering this scenario.


True, but we should consider the scenario with something approaching intellectual honesty.

However without TV I imagine the world would rely on traditional forms of entertainment, theater, radio, cinema etc.

And here's where the weirdness begins... :)

Television is nearly as old as radio and relies on much of the same technological advances. If you want to throttle television in it's cradle, you going to adversely effect radio and a lot of other technologies, yet you blithely assume Fibber McGee and Molly along with the Red and Blue Networks will be chugging along unaffected.

However the big problem is Television introduced a wholly new idea, it was the first mass information platform.

Score a massive laugh point. Penny newspapers were the first mass information platform, they even had pictures. Radio was another mass information platform too and one that was used quite effectively for all sorts of purposes.

For the first time people were able to learn through a very powerful medium, sight.

Learn by sight? I suppose when you read you're not looking at letters, words, pictures, diagrams, and stuff like that.

Television was in effect the first social media.

No, the first mass social media was the penny post.

The social consequences of "No television" amount to a fart in hurricane compared to the technological consequences of the same.
 
When Baird invented the television the Beeb was up and running and so I presume were other radio stations elsewhere. TV at least in England didn't really take off until the 50s (the coronation of Elizabeth being a major spur) with the BBC broadcasts before WW2 being confined to the London area and tvs to the rich. It was shut down during WW2 (were there tv stations in the states then?) .
So I can't honestly see much changing until the 50s/early 60s and by then somebody would have come up with a tv of some sort perhaps when transistors were being commonly used instead of valves.
It might have meant that the BBC was challenged by commercial radio stations earlier.
 
you mean we would have Clacks™ instead? ;) (™ Terry Pratchett)

Your remark reminds me of that steampunk novel 'The difference engine'
 
no internet.

Given that the ARPANET and other early networking technologies (and a fair proportion of network technologies today) relied on cables rather than wireless transmission, and given that many early computer terminals were effectively teletypes, I would doubt that there would be no internet at all.
 
True, but we should consider the scenario with something approaching intellectual honesty.

Of course we must

And here's where the weirdness begins... :)

Television is nearly as old as radio and relies on much of the same technological advances. If you want to throttle television in it's cradle, you going to adversely effect radio and a lot of other technologies, yet you blithely assume Fibber McGee and Molly along with the Red and Blue Networks will be chugging along unaffected.

Fair point, I was not aware of the relationship between radio and television technology, I was simply meaning that it would likely be of far greater relevance in a world without the latter

Score a massive laugh point. Penny newspapers were the first mass information platform, they even had pictures. Radio was another mass information platform too and one that was used quite effectively for all sorts of purposes.

My point was more that newspapers and radio can and are manipulated in way that is harder for television, though not to say that TV has not been used for propaganda

Learn by sight? I suppose when you read you're not looking at letters, words, pictures, diagrams, and stuff like that.

Reading and a visual demonstration are different forms of learning, true you read with your eyes, but the great advantage of a television is that you can witness the exact nature of an event without relying on some else's interpretation of said event as would naturally occur in other medias.

No, the first mass social media was the penny post.

The social consequences of "No television" amount to a fart in hurricane compared to the technological consequences of the same.

I politely disagree, television has had a massive social impact on the world today, it is the most common source of news and media events, the vietnam war was the first live televised war for example, having the images of that conflict beamed into everyone's living room greatly affected the discussion of it.

I apologise if my post was misleading. You may also note that I have communicated this in a manner that is both non-condensing and non-patronising.
 
Given that the ARPANET and other early networking technologies (and a fair proportion of network technologies today) relied on cables rather than wireless transmission, and given that many early computer terminals were effectively teletypes, I would doubt that there would be no internet at all.

I'm going to agree here. Plus, even if the Internet and computers do develop to being able to show video, consumers would, at first, be so used to radio, it may not catch on.
 
It would also have an impact on sports. Slower sports like baseball may not be affected, but more "visual" sports like basketball and football would be less popular ITTL.
 
When Baird invented the television the Beeb was up and running and so I presume were other radio stations elsewhere. TV at least in England didn't really take off until the 50s (the coronation of Elizabeth being a major spur) with the BBC broadcasts before WW2 being confined to the London area and tvs to the rich. It was shut down during WW2 (were there tv stations in the states then?) .
So I can't honestly see much changing until the 50s/early 60s and by then somebody would have come up with a tv of some sort perhaps when transistors were being commonly used instead of valves.
It might have meant that the BBC was challenged by commercial radio stations earlier.

What Baird developed was a now-dead technology that involved rather crude mechanically based scanning and optics, rather than electronic scanning. An entirely different tack resulted in TV technology that we have today. (If you're curious, google "televisor", which was Baird's own term for his gadget with a screen maybe the size of an index card, and a rather large disc spinning at high RPMs.)

There were a few TV stations in the US prior to World War II: a couple in the New York city area, and one in Schenectady, NY (home of General Electric, where much development took place). There were broadcasts as early as 1938 or 1939, but first economic conditions and then the war kept things from going very far at all. But shortly after VJ Day, the Dumont network got up and running. In fact, one of the first Dumont stations is still a going concern after 68 years (channel 5 in Washington) although many others have fallen by the wayside.
 
Well if we had no tv then there are no console games. Also we might have a generation that might still read actual books, go outside and play, and actually talk to one another rather than text, twittter, and facebook in its stead. :p
 
Well if we had no tv then there are no console games. Also we might have a generation that might still read actual books, go outside and play, and actually talk to one another rather than text, twittter, and facebook in its stead. :p

Either that, or a new invention would have been made to replace television that people would complain about.
 
Also we might have a generation that might still read actual books, go outside and play, and actually talk to one another rather than text, twittter, and facebook in its stead. :p

Actually, as mentioned, TTL could still see text-based Internet emerge, meaning twitter and the like could still emerge.
 
and what about RADAR ?

it need a TV screen to display the radar image.
one reason that British and Germans start into TV broadcasts before WW2
Was to get bugs out hardware and produce suffice components not only for TV, but also used in Radar installation.
TV broadcasts was nice cover story until radar got operational. but al ready then the TV start is revolution.

The TV screen could become "Military Hardware" during or after WW2, so not a civilian mass product.
consider pre-war broadcasts as failed Experiment in mass media technology, like BBC/Sky 3DTV broadcasts of last years…

although, i try to imagine such a world were, I sit on my "computer" Telex I/O terminal,
reading kilometer of paper printout of this Forum daily output…
Are there enough trees in world, who can take this gigantic demand on print Paper ?

belief me they switch soon to TV screen, do lack of paper...
 
although, i try to imagine such a world were, I sit on my "computer" Telex I/O terminal,
reading kilometer of paper printout of this Forum daily output…
Are there enough trees in world, who can take this gigantic demand on print Paper ?

belief me they switch soon to TV screen, do lack of paper...

While this is a very reasonable consideration, I doubt that verbosity of the type expressed in a forum would be considered to be sensible in the circumstance that television technology was slower to develop (because, as stated above, I don't believe that it is realistic to conceive of a world where television was never invented). The Unix-like nature of ultra-contracted commands would likely persist longer in such a circumstance.
 
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