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Author Topic: I'm worried!  (Read 3285 times)

32BT

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I'm worried!
« on: May 25, 2012, 06:43:10 am »

I'm worried.

The progress in computer graphics is steadily moving on and these days we see an increasing use of computer animation in video and television production. In fact, even commercials are making use of it more often. Marketing departments apparently think that a lie can be delivered equally well by an artificial human being instead of a real human being. I suppose they are right, because if your world is build on lies, then that is exactly what you are: artificial.

But that isn't worrying me so much. Marketing has worked the same way since its inception and even though I don't like its influence on human perception and the way it's shaping society accordingly, it is apparently how human beings happen to prefer consumption of information.

But it is exactly the latter that is worrying me so much. That passive mode of information consumption of moving imagery. Everything's video these days. You try to find a decent piece of information, you have to click video. No more quickly skimping through written text to easily access the relevant bits. There is an entire generation born who will not be able to process information through written text, stimulating their own imagination to form accompanying images, thereby also forming their own opinion.
 
And therein lies the danger. The increasing use of computer graphics to visualize past events. Especially on once renowned and respectable information channels like "Discovery" and "National Geographic". People, as passive information consumers, are simply accepting whatever fantasy interpretation comes from the production companies. And those fantasies are more likely based on dramatic interest than on scientific accuracies. Or, more importantly, it is a single interpretation, not necessarily scientifically accurate, which, due to the way people judge truth subconsciously (seeing = believing), is quickly becoming a new norm in our interpretation of history and historic events.

As a matter of fact, too much emphasize goes to representation, and too little on interpretation. And the representation kills any individual formation of opinion, because it kills individual imagination. And that is worrying me.


 
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Tony Jay

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Re: I'm worried!
« Reply #1 on: May 25, 2012, 07:45:42 am »

Thanks for the thoughts Oscar.

Sadly, I think that most of your points about the latter influence of video may possibly reflect only an accelerating deteriorating trend well apparent for some decades in the overall standard of education, literacy, and rhetoric.
In fact the classic triad of rhetoric, logic, and grammar appears only to be of vague historical interest now.
You are correct in your assertion that everyone certainly has an opinion - not many appear to be able to substantiate their point of view in any way that make sense. An opinion seems much more important than its basis - challenging its basis will often elicit disbelief, derision, or even aggression.
I can certainly see how certain televsion programs could contribute to the mindless acceptance, or rejection for that matter, of any fact or opinion.
Critical assessment of evidence in order to form an educated view on an issue has just become a "politically unacceptable" pastime.
Western society is in decline because a very few individuals are able to sway the opinions of the masses with a smoke-and-mirror approach where fact and logic are throwaway items.
Television and video certainly make this process easier but the culture that makes this possible was well entrenched decades ago.

My humble opinion

Tony Jay
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Rob C

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Re: I'm worried!
« Reply #2 on: May 25, 2012, 09:32:09 am »

Yes, perhaps not entrenched, but certainly launched some decades ago.

I think that it probably began within the hallowed halls of academe, with the false (even if believed by them) posturing of feminists, assorted political and educational charlatans and a handful of women's magazines, amongst them, if an old fashion-snapper's memory serves, Cosmopolitan, which seemed to be favoured fly-with-me magazine of all the models with whom I ever travelled anywhere.

From fanciful sex advice to ridiculous shoes, that sort of example of gracious living (loving?) became the then bible of generations of impressionable young women. What can anyone expect from later generations reared from that datum line? Worse, the quality of imagery and presentation seems to have dropped with the morals. That last remark about morality might seem to be a little rich coming from myself, but I can tell you without any hesitation at all that I always treated my subjects with respect, always tried to make them look as good as I possibly could, and never, to the best of my knowledge, made an image of any one of them that I would be ashamed of their future children seeing. And no, there is not now, and never was any sub-file within a secret drawer.

The decline is language skills is fairly evident on the Internet, and much of it comes from a determined effort of some to appear ‘cool’ and ‘cutting edge’, the latter another of those phrases beloved of old stock agencies, and applied to almost any image that depended for its effect on schlock value.

But education itself is in decline: my daughter, a teacher, tells me of an occasion when she was correcting examination papers to be smitten by that feeling of déjà vu where it suddenly felt she’d already corrected that particular paper. Turned out she had: copied by several pupils, and written almost word-for-word as found on the Internet! The idiots didn’t even have the initiative to elaborate the thing a little bit in an effort to make it their own!

So, at least a couple of lost generations, to be followed by – what?

Rob C


 

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: I'm worried!
« Reply #3 on: May 25, 2012, 12:05:28 pm »

... Everything's video these days. You try to find a decent piece of information, you have to click video. No more quickly skimping through written text to easily access the relevant bits...

True. My defense (and their loss) is simply to leave the page the moment I realize it is video only, without a text to "skim through, to easily access the relevant bits." I hate to sit and wait for another stupid commercial to end, sit and wait till anchors are done with intro and wise cracks, sit and wait till video finally comes to the only point I am interested in: the relevant bit.

My teen daughter then says: "But, dad, I love commercials!" Which reminds me of my younger age, when I called it an "MTv world" (if anyone still remembers when MTv actually played music): music videos full of happy, young people, singing and dancing, driving fancy cars and partying in luxurious mansions... beach and ball, sand and sex, booze and music. Life in that world was simple and beautiful, shiny and glittery, in other words, nothing like the real life. No wonder then, that after kids eventually experience the real life, they find drugs as the only way to return to the "MTv world".

Rob C

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Re: I'm worried!
« Reply #4 on: May 25, 2012, 03:05:41 pm »

True. My defense (and their loss) is simply to leave the page the moment I realize it is video only, without a text to "skim through, to easily access the relevant bits." I hate to sit and wait for another stupid commercial to end, sit and wait till anchors are done with intro and wise cracks, sit and wait till video finally comes to the only point I am interested in: the relevant bit.

My teen daughter then says: "But, dad, I love commercials!" Which reminds me of my younger age, when I called it an "MTv world" (if anyone still remembers when MTv actually played music): music videos full of happy, young people, singing and dancing, driving fancy cars and partying in luxurious mansions... beach and ball, sand and sex, booze and music. Life in that world was simple and beautiful, shiny and glittery, in other words, nothing like the real life. No wonder then, that after kids eventually experience the real life, they find drugs as the only way to return to the "MTv world".



Slobodan, are you telling me that not all of the people in the USA drive muscle cars and ride choppers, have speedboats and long-haired, long-legged, easy-to-look-at and just easy-as-hell blonde girlfriends? That not all of the guys have the same magnificent V-shaped torsos, are amazingly agile dancers and have masses of hair alternating with that cool bald look, even within the same week? I thought it a land where everyone was between seventeen and twenty-five; or so Jerry Lee Lewis once implied...

I feel another certainty about to shatter.

Rob C

Isaac

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Re: I'm worried!
« Reply #5 on: May 25, 2012, 03:34:47 pm »

... are you telling me that not all of the people in the USA...
You've mistaken California for the USA.
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Isaac

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Re: I'm worried!
« Reply #6 on: May 25, 2012, 03:37:32 pm »

Life is hard, let's go shopping!
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RSL

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Re: I'm worried!
« Reply #7 on: May 25, 2012, 03:43:35 pm »

You sound even older than me, Oscar.
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Peter McLennan

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Re: I'm worried!
« Reply #8 on: May 25, 2012, 03:46:45 pm »

Ah, but there is another side to that coin.  The emergence of commonplace CGI isn't all bad.

Any film-maker who's watched "Tintin" has to be gobsmacked at what's now possible.  If you can dream it up, you can put it on the screen.  Spielberg has commented that the freedom from grips, electrics, wires and dolly track is liberating.   As one who has held the position, I was amused to note the complete absence of a Director of Photography credit.

Does this new liberation create deficient viewers?  Are viewers responsible for the fact that imagination is now universally visible?  Is our sense of reality enhanced or diminished by CGI?  The lies they tell us on television are the same lies they've always told us.  It's just that today's version of those lies have better lighting.


Is the evidence of mass illiteracy we see on the Internet a result of people's declining literacy skills?  Or is it simply that their/they're/there  : ) shortcomings are now more evident, more visible?  In the past, few wrote.  Now, everybody's a publisher.
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Rob C

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Re: I'm worried!
« Reply #9 on: May 25, 2012, 06:04:44 pm »

Peter -

I'm not sure if it's the easy access to the Internet or not; it isn't so much what Joe Public writes, I think, but what the media put out there for our consumption.

There are several 'lawyers 4 U' types of commercial doing the British tv rounds these days, and they are all aimed (I assume) at the terminally stupid. Another type of commercial is the one where the viewer is invited to ring a number and get a loan because payday is some time off... hell's teeth, how to get into permanent debt! And so it rolls on, day after day, with more blandishments tempting one to make more mistakes. I gather that Big Brother has now presented on-screen sex. This may not be true, of course, and as I have never watched a single episode, I don't know if it's likely, but regardless of the facts, that's the sort of image of it now being peddled (or is that advertised, but under the guise of news?) on Sky News...

So as I suggested, maybe we are all less daft than it seems and it's just the wishful thinking of the media after all. However, I do think that there is a general loss of self-respect in the world at large.

Rob C
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