Forget Twitter and Facebook, Google and the Kindle.
Television is still the most influential medium around. Indeed, not many of the
poorest regions (地区) of the world, it remains the next big thing—finally becomes
globally available. And that is a good thing, because the TV revolution is
changing lives for the better. Across the developing world,
around 45% of families had a TV in 1995; by 2005 the number had climbed above
60%. That is some way behind the U.S., where are more TVs than people, and where
people now easily get access to the Internet. Five million more families in
sub-Saharan Africa will get a TV over the next five years. In 2005, after the
fall of the Taliban (塔利班), which had outlawed TV, 1 in 5 Afghans had
one. The global total is another 150 million by 2013—pushing the numbers
to well beyond two thirds of families. Television’s most
powerful effect will be on the lives of women. In India, researchers Robert
Jensen and Emily Oster found that when TVs reached villages, women were more
likely to go to the market without their husbands approval and less likely to
want a boy rather than a girl. They were more likely to make decisions over
child healthcare. TV is also a powerful medium for adult education. In the
Indian state of Gujarat, Chitrageet is a popular show that plays Bollywood songs
with words in Gujarati on the screen. Within six months, viewers had made a
small but significant (有意义的) improvement on their reading skills.
Too much TV has been associated with violence, overweight and loneliness.
However, TV is having a positive influence on the lives of billions
worldwide. The underlined word "outlawed" in paragraph 2 probably means "______".