Dark (Screen) Future

For its new building, going up just off Broadway in Manhattan, station WOR-TV this week sealed a lead-covered, radiation-proof copper box containing predictions by New York TV critics on the future .of television. The predictions, to be opened 100 years from this week, generally foresaw a rosy future for the medium. But the World-Telegram and Sun Critic Harriet Van Home took bitter exception:

"We are now in the third year of the Television Age. And our people are becoming less literate by the minute. Along with the old patterns of existence, television is destroying the old standards of culture. As old habits decline, such as reading books and thinking thoughts, TV will absorb their time.

"By the 21st Century our people doubtless will be squint-eyed, hunchbacked and fond of the dark. Conversation will be a lost art. People will simply tell each other jokes...But why am I carrying on like this? Chances are that the grandchild of the Television Age won't know how to read this."

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