Are televisions extinct?

Author: fauxlaw

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fauxlaw
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I've encountered a question in my household that needs an answer beyond mine. I'm appealing to your good graces. I love my wife to death, but she hands on to anachronisms in the face of, according to a language problem we seen to have in abundance because we do not seem to share the skill of Adam to name things appropriately. I used, once, on this issue, the example of the mouse. Not the cute little rodent, as if we would accept one [careful! it may just be a small rat] sitting on our desk. I'm talking about that computer interface device whereby images are manipulated on our computer monitor. While it would be a stretch to call the current device a mouse [remember, the original device had a cable, but it was mounted in the head and not the rump], and, in the case of the pad in virtually every laptop made today is not called a mouse, our wireless, handheld models still are.

Well, my problem is with another device: a television. Just before starting this string, I checked Amazon for that device by name: television, the original device from, what, 80 years ago, roughly, which provided both image and sound, but included a tuner, and speakers, all mounted in a convenient box. Does that device still exist? You might have one, but, in my mind, if they are not currently sold, they are no longer made. Made, as in two older such devices consult some birds and bees, a stork is called in, and, voila: offspring. 

Back to Amazon. I went through nine pages [there were 171] of "television," never encountering the device in a box described above. They all looked like the devices I have in my home; four of them, not including the other devices I have with monitors and wifi streaming capability.  I concluded that "televisions" do not mate and make anymore; therefore, they are extinct, even if there are living samples. That how we refer to "extinction in nature; we may have living specimens, but if they are no longer mating pairs... well, we're familiar with the extinction process.  What is in my house is a monitor without a tuner [though, it has speakers I don't use], which, according to Amazon, are procreating like rabbits.
So, if the device does not have a tuner, and depends on some other device to receive a signal [there are several], can the device in question still be called a "television," or must it be something else? The term I've mentioned seems appropriate: a monitor [no, not a lizard].
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@fauxlaw
Quite simply, no.

The analogy isn't appropriate, whereas current device/devices are still compliant with definition.


Best keep televisual technology remote, in my opinion...When we become hard wired, that is when we will cede control.

Not that younger people haven't already ceded a level of autonomy to their hand held's.

Choose between a face to face and a text, and the text takes precedence......Ok.... so their choice?
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@fauxlaw
No, it is still called a televison. The word television combines tele, "far off" in Greek, and vision, "something seen in the imagination," from a Latin root.
The modern word was first used in 1900 in a paper by Russian scientist Constantin Perskyi that he presented at the First International Congress of Electricity. At the time, television was just a theoretical concept as a means for transmitting still photographic images over telegraph lines.
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I'm a bit of a pack rat, too especially as it concerns antiquated technology. I have a VHS player, a beta-max, my first computer (a Gateway desktop,) an analog television with the rotating dials, a vinyl record player, a land-line rotary phone, a walkman,  etc.

I suppose the distinction between "television" and "monitor" in modern times is somewhat antiquated as well  since the transition to digital. There's no substantial "mechanical" difference between that which we see on "television" and that which we see on our "monitors," much less how they function. So I do understand your point. Television is a remnant--an echo--of a past to those of us who are old enough to have appreciated the experience.

14 days later

sadolite
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A television is a monitor with a tuner and audio amplifier. A monitor is just a television without a tuner with inputs for various forms of video signals some monitors come with built in audio some don't.  No difference otherwise. A modern television incorporates both.