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Entertainment is the supraideology of all discourse on television. No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure. That is why even on news shows which provide us daily with fragments of tragedy and barbarism, we are urged by the…
The third level continues. Games have storylines like the historical novel, which arc from beginning to end. Games have cinematic cut scenes, pure montages of attraction. Games subsume the lines of television just as television subsumed cinema and cinema the novel. But they are something else as well. They are not…
Although the etymology of the word is a matter of debate, for at least 50 years “kayfabe” has referred to the unspoken contract between wrestlers and spectators: We’ll present you something clearly fake under the insistence that it’s real, and you will experience genuine emotion. Neither party acknowledges the…
For some reason Apple is still considered the liberal/counter-cultural choice but if you think about every dystopian novel/movie and then I said “there’s going to be a company, the world’s largest company (or thereabouts), they’re going to sell one product (basically - the difference between an…
The central problem for any theory of the origin of replication is the fact that a replicative apparatus has to function almost perfectly if it is to function at all. If it does not function perfectly, it will give rise to errors in replicating itself, and the errors will accumulate from generation to generation. The…
People who take pride in the same object can form a knightly order but not a brotherhood of loving sons. However, as soon as pride in the exploits of the fathers is replaced by grief over their death, we will begin to perceive the Earth as a graveyard and nature as a death-bearing force. Then politics will yield to…
To launch a taboo, a group has to be poised halfway between weakness and power. A confident group doesn't need taboos to protect it. It's not considered improper to make disparaging remarks about Americans, or the English. And yet a group has to be powerful enough to enforce a taboo. Coprophiles, as of this writing…
Moses Maimonides, who lived nearly 900 years ago, wrote a book called The Guide for the Perplexed. In it, he said: "The human race contains such a variety of individuals that we cannot discover two persons exactly alike in any moral quality or external appearance. This great variety and necessity of social life are…
People are living longer and societies are getting grayer. You hear about it all the time. You read about it in your newspapers. You hear about it on your television sets. Sometimes I'm concerned that we hear about it so much that we've come to accept longer lives with a kind of a complacency, even ease. But make no…
The NPCs have no depth. The can only carry on brief repetitive conversations about simple topics, such as the weather or football. They all follow simple repetitive paths from home, to work, to the store, and back home again where they spend the majority of their time watching television.
Bill Nye the Science Guy Show: "Rules" Objective: Change the world. Produce a TV show that gets kids and adults excited about science, so that the United States will again be the world leader in technology, innovation, and sound management of the environment. For example, when our audience is of age, we'd like them to…
电 is used in many words relating to modern, electrically-powered things. For example, 电影 (electricity - shadow) means "film", 电视 (electricity - to look at) means "TV", and 电脑 (electricity - brain) means "computer".
As we approach the end of the twentieth century, we are witnessing the emergence of a new kind of social scientist-the non-verbalist. Just as the birdwatcher delights in watching birds and their behaviour, so the non-verbalist delights in watching the non-verbal cues and signals of human beings. He watches them at…
The greatest is obsolescence, the meaning of something evocative changing because the players’ reality has changed since the inspiration entered it. William Gibson’s ground-breaking cyberpunk novel Neuromancer begins, “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” Supporting details…
Ever since viewing screens entered the home, many observers have worried that they put our brains into a stupor. An early strain of research claimed that when we watch television, our brains mostly exhibit slow alpha waves—indicating a low level of arousal, similar to when we are daydreaming. These findings have been…
In the age of wooden television, media were there to entertain, to sell an advertiser's product, perhaps to inform. Watching television, then, could indeed be considered a leisure activity. In our hypermediated age, we have come to suspect that watching television constitutes a species of work. Post-industrial…
The success of Apollo was mainly due to the fact that the project was conceived and honestly presented to the public as an international sporting event and not as a contribution to science. The order of priorities in Apollo was accurately reflected by the first item to be unloaded after each landing on the Moon's…
We make models in science, but we also make them in everyday life. Model-dependent realism applies not only to scientific models but also to the conscious and subconscious mental models we all create in order to interpret and understand the everyday world. There is no way to remove the observer—us—from our perception…
1. Keep the TV off before the child turns 2. I know this is tough to hear for parents who need a break. If you can’t turn it off—if you haven’t created those social networks that can allow you a rest—at least limit your child’s exposure to TV. We live in the real world, after all, and an irritated, overextended parent…
...science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome…