Technological Determinism at it Finest

My assignment was to find out the name of a donor to a local public
broadcasting station (PBS or NPR). I was to contact the donor and ask them why
they decided to pledge money for public broadcasting. I am also supposed to
include a photo or picture that illustrates my findings. The first step of this
assignment was to choose which local public broadcasting station I wanted to
research about. Because I have grown up watching programs on PBS, I thought it would
be an interesting topic to continue to learn about. After calling the national PBS
hotline, I discovered that there are several charitable organizations involved in
helping PBS to be as influential as it is. One, surprisingly enough is The Saint Peter and Paul
Orthodox Christian Church in Glenview, IL. Contacting St. Peter and Paul Church was easy enough, because this church was near my neighborhood back home.
I was lucky enough to have the pleasure of speaking with a very sweet woman on the
phone about why they chose PBS to pledge money to. She is an active member of
the church that helped out handling philanthropy donations, and she was very excited to
speak about PBS. Apparently, supporting PBS locally is very simple
to do. On their website, you enter your zipcode and what you want to
contribute, along with a method of payment. They chose PBS because of their outstanding public
broadcasting programs and wanted to help continue to
enhance all the progress PBS has made in helping the American public. Many of
the children are absolutely in love with the programs such as Arthur and The
Reading Rainbow. However, it is not only the children that love these programs- but the
parents also. Parents that are members of the church believe that the programs on PBS are extremely beneficial to their children’s learning development. PBS provides non- violent, intelligent
shows that put their children in positive moods after watching. Even the Sunday School teachers at Saint Peter and Paul use the programs as classroom aids during class.
The photograph I chose is of Saint Peter and Paul Orthodox Christian Church. I
chose this to portray where this generous money is truly coming from, with a
visual of the two Saints that this church worships. Especially in times of economic decline, it is important to contribute to programs that you believe in. Saint Peter and Paul Orthodox Christian Church donating money would be an example of technological determinism.
Technological determinism relies on the technological factors first, stating that
they are causing change in social and cultural advances. Without the influence
of the PBS program, the church would have no motivation to donate money.
This is an example of technological determinism at its most honest moment,
when culture and society take out of their own wallets to keep the technology
they viewed previously, tuned on.

Works Cited
Saint Peter and Paul. 1994. Photograph. Http://images.google.com/imgres?
imgurl=http://www.saintspap.org/fronticon.bmp&imgrefurl=http://www.saintspa
p.org, Glenview, IL.