Dear Harry, you said just about everything except "... and get off my lawn!"

Harry: "In the Middle Ages millions of people in Europe, mainly women, were burned to death or drowned after being “scientifically” diagnosed as witches and therefore a threat to society."

Wikipedia: "the church ruled in all civil matters, including that of administering capital punishment for violations of a spiritual nature"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witches

Harry: "Whereas reading requires concentration, television is often background wallpaper 24-7"

People are watching less TV and using the Intenet to find out what they need instead. Last year saw Internet use overtake television viewing for the first time, according to Nielsen research. I'm currently reading the works of Arthur Conan Doyle and other classics on Project Gutneberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/).

Harry: "Life expectancy, increasing for 100 years, is now expected to go into reverse."

Australia is one of the few countries with life expectancy over 80.
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
Indications are that rates of heart disease and cancer are dropping ,and survival rates are increasing.

Harry: "At least when the church was dominant there was in most traditions consideration for the poor."

This sub-context that religion would fix all of our ills is an affront - if you believe this, take a trip to any country where religion is dominant (e.g. Ethiopia - I've been there). Look at history. Look at the correlations between development indices, well-being and religion. In short, come back from la la land.

sorry harry, still havnt read your article to attention required...

but sams...thanks for that gutenberg site...went straight for oscar wilde...dont know of any author that has understood and expresses the human emotion as well as he did...http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/hpaot10h.htm ...read 'selfish giant' again...and effect the same as when I was seven when first read the tale...

thanks...though I do find some comments you made unreasonable...but reply little later

Sam

Harry's misgivings about the ubiquity of communications technology would be warranted if those devices were all based on the one-way, transmit-only broadcast technologies of the 20th century.

He neglects to factor in the active user, who can choose, create, filter and fashion the information available to them.

The old media encourage us to sit-down, watch, listen and believe. The online media encourage us sit-up, read, talk and research. You only have to look at the rates at which populations are abandoning TV for the interactivity of online communications to see where people's hearts are really at.