TV and the spaces of everyday life

In 1958 the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) promoted its vision of television’s future with an image of a stylishly modern home (Fig. 3.1). Equipped with a “picture frame” flat screen TV mounted on a wall near a huge picture window, the living room was overcome by the postwar dream of TV leisure where views of the outside world (gleaming through the window) were now competing with virtual views on the TV screen. Adding to the attractions of this domestic utopia are a “television control unit” and a mini-fridge on wheels so that the residents are spared the quotidian “challenges” of simply moving around. As the RCA promotional rhetoric suggests, television offers a new and thoroughly modern form of spectacular intimacy where the virtual and the material co-exist, and where the object world is easily manipulated through technical and architectural tricks that allow for (at least the fantasy of) mastery over the environment