What is television, really, and the standard for absurd complexities.

What do we call House of Cards now that it's available through Netflix rather than the traditional platform of the Television? Is it still a television show? It may still appear, in some homes and some contexts, on our television screens but it hasn't come to us through the standard methods, more often it's via a games console of through a computer, so what makes a television show a 'television' show? What is the defining Television-ness of television?

We're devolving into the absurd complexities akin to Heidegger here, but as British media distribution companies Blockbuster and HMV become obsolete and forced into potential bankruptcy and liquidation, so broadcasting channels are having to rethink their own distribution and broadcasting methods to compete with such companies as Netflix, particularly given that it has just created its first, very own, Netflix Show : a remake of the BBV miniseries House of Cards, this time around starring Spacey.

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But, actually, none of that answers the original question of whether Netflix shows are actually television shows. Well, if we trace the word back to its Greek roots, 'tele-' means 'distance', and vision... well, it means vision.

Well, vision means vision in Latin, not Greek. I guess telescope was already taken. Teleopticon?

However, this translation of Greek names into Latin is in no way the innocent process it is considered to this day. Beneath the seemingly literal and thus faithful translation there is concealed, rather, a translation of Greek experience into a different way of thinking. Roman thought takes over the Greek words without a corresponding, equally authentic experience of what they say, without the Greek word. The rootlessness of Western thought begins with this translation.

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If the show presences on a TV, it's a TV show, and if it presences on YouTube, it's just a rootless video clip. Next week, the absurd complexities of video tweets.   ¶ 8:02 AM