From Rabbit Ears To Algorithms

Television once brought families together around a single glowing screen. Today, algorithms decide what each of us might want to watch next.

From Rabbit Ears to Algorithms takes an entertaining and thought-provoking journey through the remarkable transformation of television-and the society watching it.

From I Love Lucy, separate beds, family sitcoms, westerns, and three-network television to cable news, reality TV, prestige dramas, streaming, smartphones, and artificial intelligence, Daniel Ferreira examines how television's changing boundaries reflect our changing attitudes toward family, sex, violence, authority, religion, privacy, fame, and one another.

This isn't an argument that television was better in the past-or that everything is better today. Instead, it asks a more interesting question: What did we gain, what did we lose, and what should we keep?

Funny, nostalgic, and occasionally uncomfortable, From Rabbit Ears to Algorithms is ultimately about much more than television. It is about how technology changed the way we see the world-and how, increasingly, the technology is learning to see us.