You have made of him a laughing stock of intelligence

Lee De Forest was a pioneer of radio and modern communication in general. Like many inventors and technological pioneers, he came later to rue how the promise of technology had been undermined by grubby human nature and/or commerce. I read of a Google pioneer who now is concerned about the click-culture addiction he helped bring about. Or was it Facebook? Anyway, de Forest had the same remorse.

From Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film by Mike Adams. From a letter he wrote October 28th, 1946 to the editor of the Chicago Tribune.

What have you done with my child? He was conceived as a potent instrumentality for culture, fine music, the uplifting of America's mass intelligence. You have debased this child, you have sent him out into the streets in rags of ragtime, tatters of jive and boogie music, to collect money from all and sundry for hubba bubba and audio jitterbug. You have made of him a laughing stock of intelligence, surely a stench in the nostrils of the gods of the ionosphere; you have cut time into tiny cubelets called "spots" (more rightly stains), wherewith the occasional fine program is periodically smeared with impudent insistences to buy or try.