There’s a good deal in common between the mind’s eye and the TV screen, and though the TV set has all too often been the boobtube, it could be, it can be, the box of dreams.

Le Guin contrasts television’s debased reputation (“boobtube”) with its latent artistic potential. By likening the TV screen to the “mind’s eye,” she suggests that visual media, like reading, can stimulate imagination rather than merely replace it—depending on how it is used and what is made for it. The phrase “box of dreams” reframes the television set as a vessel for storytelling, wonder, and humane insight, aligning it with the oldest functions of narrative art. Implicit is a critique of commercial, lowest-common-denominator programming, paired with a defense of the medium itself: technology is not destiny; creative intention and cultural values determine whether it deadens attention or enlarges inner life.