Comments on: Living In TV

By: Ronin

Ronin — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 08:43:10 +0000

Ok, I’m not sure what study the Rev was referring to, but it may have been the discovery of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are neurons that fire when a person (or animal) is doing an action AND when a person sees someone else do that same action. V.S. Ramachandran has described the discovery of mirror neurons as being in the same league as the discovery of D.N.A. I’m not aware of any studies showing that mirror neurons fire when we watch television, but then again I’m only passingly familiar with the subject.

Here’s Ramachandran’s writeup:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html

And here’s a solid video about the discovery and its possible implications (I first heard about mirror neurons when I caught this segment on PBS…see, news media isn’t all bad):

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/01.html

I also seriously doubt that mirror neurons have no ties to television…there can’t be that much of a difference between watching someone else hit a baseball and watching an image of someone else hitting a baseball…but we’ll have to wait for the research and see…

Be Good,

Ronin

By: human?

human? — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 07:19:03 +0000

Then there is the internet, which is yet another powerful talisman for projecting your consciousness into far-off on-screen worlds. Many people who loudly denounce television spend more than their fair share of time in front of the computer screen, projecting and identifying with people who arenâ€™t really there. Is that bad? Is any of this ultimately any different from reading a really good book and getting absorbed in it?

but the people ARE really there….

its very different than a really good book, the medium truly is the message…

where a book is an extension of the eye.. the internet seems to be an actual extension of mind itself, some sort of neural network…

a book is very mechanical, the internet is chaos…

i think you are probably right about projecting ourselves inside the TV.

i also gotta say TV is a very rapidly dying medium. with the popularity of things like youtube, google video & ifilms, i tunes, and also basically every channel having their content available online on their own websites, and in turn television shows becoming more and more like the internet (show formats, extreme being “pods” on the google channel Current, and the like), things are changing faster and faster, and IMO, for the good…

one
human?

By: Assistant/Atlas

Assistant/Atlas — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 06:07:44 +0000

And this, my friends, is why I want to make TV.

To control the world.

By: shawn

shawn — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 01:37:49 +0000

I haven’t read it, but a friend has recommended a book called “The Plug-In Drug”…

You can get it at your local neighborhood library…
Or if you like buying stuff:
http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-0140076980-0

By: slomo

slomo — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 23:10:03 +0000

If this is the case then your monitor should be doing the same thing to you. I wonder what an investigation to sitting in front of a computer monitor would yield.

I always fall into a trance when I play solitaire on my computer.

By: aditi tahiti

aditi tahiti — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 22:32:13 +0000

Have you been watching too much of Cronenberg’s Videodrome recently?? heh…

By: Bret

Bret — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 18:25:55 +0000

“This is caused by the radiant light produced by cathode ray technology within the television set. ”

If this is the case then your monitor should be doing the same thing to you. I wonder what an investigation to sitting in front of a computer monitor would yield.

By: sketchmonkey

sketchmonkey — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:56:36 +0000

Damn dynamic text editors… The last sentence of my comment above should read thusly:

TV, much like live theater or the movies, requires a willing suspension of (or adherance to) belief that what is being experienced is in some measure ‘really’ happening beyond the medium of TV / stage / film… All are proto-forms of fully-immersive virtual reality (life?)… while not ‘fully’ immersive, TV definately draws the viewer’s attention into a angle of reality that is part of their waking, bodily reality, if somewhat sideways to it…

By: sketchmonkey

sketchmonkey — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:53:12 +0000

The thought that a person’s ‘headspace’ is projected into that of the television does not strike me as untenable… in fact I think this is effectively, if not precisely, what occurs. Namely, a person deeply engrossed with a television broadcast is actively engaged in that broadcast such that they are ‘living it’, so to speak; meaning they are giving it their full attention (to the detriment of other social activity or guests). I imagine that this phenomenon is closely related to that which occurs during cell phone use while driving (probably any sufficiently engaging phone conversation, I’m sure). Studies have shown that hands-free cell phones are just as detrimental to driving safety as a hand held version. This is because a driver engaged in a phone conversation is thought to ‘project’ the person on the other end of the conversation as directly in front of them, much as if they were having a face-to-face conversation.. Obviously, such a state of mind, takes the driver’s attention/ focus off of the road & ‘onto’ their conversation partner… even tho that partner is not physically present. It doesn’t seem to me to be a stretch of the imagination to suppose that televison might have a similar effect. TV, much like live theater or the movies, requires a willing suspension of (or adherance to) belief that what is being experienced is in some measure ‘really’ happening beyond the medium of TV