Television is really what we’ve been looking for all our lives…. It took a certain amount of effort to go to the movies…. Radio was a lot better, but there wasn’t anything to look at…. You had to use a little imagination to build yourself a picture of what was going on just by the sound.  But [T]elevision’s perfect.  You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought.  And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze.  You don’t have to concentrate.  You don’t have to react.  You don’t have to remember.  You don’t miss your brain because you don’t need it.  Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally.  Apart from that, all is peace and quiet.  You are in the man’s nirvana.  And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and say you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind.  He probably hasn’t got the price of a television set.  ~Raymond Chandlerletter to editor, Atlantic Monthly, 22 November 1950