There was a spell of five years or so when I didn't own a TV - I was several times surprised at just quite how weird some folk found it that I didn't own one of these objects: I'm dismayed when people can barely contemplate life without a TV. But then I got married & my wife really enjoys TV & it would be churlish for me to claim that I don't like some of it too. The only time I am uncomfortable with it and feel that I am 'inhabiting' more & 'dwelling' less, is if there is a TV on in the bedroom & I am trying to sleep. But these are not Orwellian telescreens & as long as there's a 'way of shutting it off completely' then I can't see it adversely affecting my capacity to dwell.

I think there is a little confusion generated by the Modern Movement that makes us confuse Modern with modern when we are actually meaning contemporary. Heidegger , under my pooint of view, saw Modern houses as a machine for living because they were indeed meant to be machines for living. That's how the Modern (not contemporary as we are talking about a cuople of years ago) architects cenceived them.

I don't think architecture is conceived anymore in that utilitarian way, or at least we try not to do so...

It's interesting, as I don't really think of any physical 'dwelling' as as space in which to be. I _am_ within my own mind, far more than I am in any other place. Though I must admit there is often a wonderful silence in "home". I find little distraction in even a very busy room, or with a TV on, the space in which I dwell is one that exists within. One is only invaded if one allows that invasion. So the intrusion of a public world via whatever medium holds little power.

Oh, there's a nice quote on this sort of area from Heidegger ;-)

"Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home."
—Letter on Humanism, 1947

the place where we dwell is a place we understand, & can anticipate to a certain degree everything that can happen. our emotional experiences map onto it, so that features of the landscape become natural symbols of our lived history. we act in this landscape, & become part of the history of others...

TV teaches us the world is violent & meaningless, & that we can do nothing about it.

We had a TV, and even moved it out from Ottawa with us. It never had this "cable" thing hooked up to it, so it was just a DVD-viewing screen.

Once we got it into our bright, mountain- and ocean-facing (small) apartment in Vancouver -- it sat there like a big, black beast. Intruding into the space. Drawing attention towards it.

So we got rid of it, and just use my iMac for watching movies. And downloaded TV episodes with the commercials edited out.

Pretty much the only "public" voice that we let into our home is CBC on the radio. Well, and CISL 650 "Golden Oldies" for the shower radio... :p

Well, Heidegger used to visit the neighbour to watch football on TV.

I just can't believe it. I am a faithful reader of your blog and imagine my surprise when i see that you are talking about Bachelard's Poetics of Space, a book i picked to read this week.

Dwelling.

Wow, insightful post. Makes me rethink my apartment hunt.

The television is a great example of bringing the public space into one's private space. But this is an increasingly important source of public contact. As more people cocoon and third places disappear, this is the only contact some people have with the outside world (besides work, but that's different). Now, you might argue that the television is responsible for this inward trend, but I think other factors like families and the density of large cities have a lot to do with it too.

The television gives us a shared context, precisely because almost everybody watches it. Unfortunately it's often a completely artificial context, and it's used to make us want to buy things. But there's a lot of community and political information there too. Although I read newspapers (online), without the television I miss out on a lot of what's going on in my city and in the country.

I think the television seems intrusive because it provides visual noise. But I find radio intrusive too, and the common annoyance that radio shares with television is that it's filled with intermediaries (djs, anchors, ads) who distract, distort, and have their own tastes. Listening to music or watching a dvd is just as noisy, but because you're controlling it, it seems less offensive.

In three paragraphs from being able to more or less dwell without thinking about it...to thinking about it.

I stopped watching TV many years ago -- when CBS took Northern Exposure off the air, if you wish to know the exact date. I stopped because TV put my mind in a vegetative state. It did not provoke thought. This isn't an inherent limitation: quite the contrary, the audiovisual medium is very powerful. But television must aim at the lowest common denominator of a very broad audience, a Homer Simpson slumped on a couch, beer in hand. Books, magazines, music, movies, at least those I admit into my little world, are more narrowly targeted and can afford to be interesting.

But there is a flip side, and I think Jason put his finger on it. Television is one of the few things a nation has in common. I made a reference to Homer Simpson just now; I couldn't have if I didn't still own a TV when he was "in". One can follow current events on 5 minutes a day at cnn.com, but one can't relate to a social context without being immersed in it. I feel isolated from the culture in which I live. I don't even get the jokes.

Getting rid of or not watching your TV is commendable, but proclaiming it is almost invariably an act of cultural snobbery. And I doubt Heidegger would be convinced by your "somehow" distinction between TV and computer monitor.

Dissing television is absolutely an act of snobbery. And I am proud of it. Here I will link to an old Kottke post quoting my husband Stewart Butterfield:

"Be elitist; it is better to read Spinoza than watch Big Brother."

I absolutely believe that, and while you can try to convince me otherwise, you will fail. Other people quite possibly believe reality TV trumps Spinoza. That is what makes them Not Me.

As for whether Heidegger would "be convinced" by whether I "dwell" in the internet and not in TV, you need to present some kind of argument. The key word is "dwell" here.

Heidegger, in his essays about technology, was notoriously unable to distinguish between a butter churn and a nuclear bomb, claiming that technology is not a matter of function but the control of human attitude and ontology, so if that's what you mean yes, I'd agree.

Some argue that Heidegger's idea of the language machine is akin to the computer, viz:

The language machine regulates and adjusts in advance the mode of our possible usage of language through mechanical energies and functions. The language machine is-and above all, is still becoming-one way in which modern technology controls the mode and the world of language as such. Meanwhile, the impress is still maintained that man is the master of the language machine. But the truth of the matter might well be that the language machine takes language into its management and thus masters the essence of the human being. (Heidegger, quoted in Heim, p. 8, see also p. 62-66)

However, it was not Heidegger's ideas on Technology I was addressing but Dwelling.

I don't know who Heidegger is or was. But TV can be entertaining, silly and informative. Get cable with 200 channels. Get a nice looking set, maybe even a nice LCD one; certainly with nice speakers. (Boris, a pretty looking set will be less visually obstrusive than the bulbous plastic blobs) Some of the good stuff is great fun. Ask your friends for recommendations. Some of the idiotic stuff is worth watching to understand idocity too.

I find it interesting how strongly people try to defend television when you talk badly about it. As far as it not being Orwellian, I'm not so sure. Everything about television is geared toward influencing us, especially to watch more television.

How is TV anymore of an incursion into my private space than books - especially if those books make me Think? How is it worse to have the theme from Gilligan's Island rattling around in my brain than the insane ramblings of a reclusive Nazi who insists that what you think is thinking is not thinking, especially if you think it is, so think about it? At least I can hum that darn theme out of my head - good luck with Martin. "Sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a man whose denial of his existential utility reinforced his non-identity as a social construct." It's just not as catchy.
But you can bash TV for what it does to a person's public space - namely, drain it of real human interaction (cuz most people are off watching Big Brother and/or reading Spinoza, but most likely the former).
Alls I'm trying to say is it's okay to have no TV, but you're then required to join a bowling league, and your team has to have at least one guy named either Earl, Bud, or Bubba Joe.

The phrase "a house is a machine for living in" was coined by Le Corbusier. Ever since it has become a stick with which to bash the modern movement in architecture. But Le Corb' intention in streamlining the interior and exterior of the house was (in his words) "to liberate women from furniture", from the conspicuous consumption displayed in household objects, exemplified in the nineteenth century baroque interior, the ostentatious counterpart to bourgeois inwardness.

Heidegger always had a different response to the dilemmas of the modern world, not critique and transformation but simple nostalgia for what had gone before. He always showed a farmer's condescension to the urban and the modern; he felt at home alone in a hut high up in the Schwarzwald. According to a close friend of his he felt physically sick when approaching cities. He remarked on an experimental series of houses in Stuttgart by Le Corb, Mies van der Rohe and others, that they were suitable only for animals. The jargon of 'dwelling' is very much part of the anti-modernism, the atavism of Heidegger's philosophy.

I wonder how much the phrases "dwell in" and "dwell on" bleed into each other? Perhaps TV seems especially antithetical to your sense of dwelling in a place because you can't really dwell on it so much; everything comes at you in a continuous moving stream. (Of course VCRs and TiVos and DVDs change that.) Whereas it's a lot easier to dwell on something you find on the web, because you control the timing of the encounter.

(That said, I keep my TV because of the handful of shows that I do consider worth dwelling on. Although now that Buffy has gone off the air, that group of shows has shrunk.)

these comments are all a couple of years old, so it feels like i'm straggling into a blogger's ghost town. i really like what you have to say about heidegger's sense of the meaning of dwelling, and particularly what the implications of that might be for contemporary life. I'm struck by the similarities between his and Adorno's attitudes about what's wrong with modern dwelling and what it should be like, ideally. Because Adorno, well, had very little to say about Heidegger that was sympathetic or agreeable. But your description of Heidegger here, which is elegant, is equally appropriate for Adorno. That's my point.