The UN46C7000- like the monolith from 2001, but sideways
June 06 2010
High def. 3D. Digital. Surround. Blue Ray. New Ray. This Ray. That Ray. Media systems today.
And? So? Nu?
Do these sensorium enhancers, these stockyards of audio and video stimuli enhance our lives?
Last night the Pianobabbler watched Planet Earth, the rich BBC - Richard Attenborough series on the natural world.
I watched it on a Samsung UN46C7000 46 inch flat screen LED tv. State of the art. 1080p. 240 Hz refresh rate. 3D. And all that tech spec-arrhea.
What did I think of this impressive piece of machinery?
Well: glory hallelujah in the beginning O what hath god wrought fiat lux godfrey daniel jumpin' jehosephat mother of pearl OMG the game's afoot and upon this charge Cry God for Harry, England, and Saint George... the Pianobabbler was impressed.
Film, as much as music, holds as formative a place in the Pianobabbler's cognitive infrastructure. As soon my teens hit, in those antique days afore home video, I was seeking out and travelling to movies. New, old, big, small, foreign, domestic movies.
Seeking out and travelling. Centrifugal.
Today, technology brings movies to us. Netflix, Zip.ca, AppleTV. We need not seek. We do not travel. Centripetal.
The quality of sound and image in the home surpasses anything the most roiled imagination, even the Pianobabbler's, could have dreamed up years ago.
As he watched Planet Earth, the stimuli hitting his corneas submerged the Pianobabbler's visual cortex. The optical realism of the images overwhelmed. The aural actuality disoriented. I struggled to remember I was watching a television monitor, not sitting in a foreign ecosystem.
The Samsung UN46C7000 did its job. Brilliantly. Literally.
And? So? Nu?
Do I feel more deeply, know more wisely, live more authentically because of the Samsung UN46C7000? Does its feast of hyper-realism sate life's aesthetic hunger?
Not sure.
On the one hand, the technical wizardry evokes the wonderment humans seem predisposed to seek. We desire to be filled with an external energy. A sense of imbuement, to which Aristotle's catharsis acts as counterparty.
On the other hand, the technology so overtakes the mind and body, that we become disturbingly passive. We do not interact with the medium. The inter disappears, only the act remains. We are acted upon by it.
Marshall McLuhan saw the media as an extension of our senses. The Samsung UN46C7000, and similar new technology, go to the limits of extension and overtake our senses. They fall out of our control. We surrender to the greater, although not higher, force.
Medium becomes a misnomer. The Samsung UN46C7000 no longer mediates. As an escalator becomes the movement for our passive bodies, the tv becomes the thought and feeling for our passive minds. We become pliant vessels. Sentient (barely), thinking (less so) vessels. The tv as escalator for our minds.
The content's message becomes submerged. The quality and force of the sensory stimuli being sent our way make the content secondary. Like synthetic flavours that persuade our senses we've consumed a fruit of nature when we haven't, the technology seduces us into believing we've had an experience we haven't had.
The medium is no longer the message. The message is the medium. The message is the Samsung UN46C7000.
How can the Pianobabbler still like his corrosive, miscreant tv? So? Nu?
Every mind is a primitive mind, quoth Northrop Frye, hero of the mind. The Pianobabbler's mind is no exception. My senses find taste in synthetic flavours, why shouldn't the Samsung UN46C7000 have its effect?
Primitively, I still love the new tv. And perhaps my criticism of the tv's workings is no more than standard-issue fear of the future.
So, with a divided mind, pleased and disturbed, awed and appalled, yielding and resisting, the Pianobabbler now returns to his regularly scheduled Samsung UN46C7000. He plans to do so for years to come. Until the next thing comes along.
Seen any good video lately? Make way on that escalator, please.
The Pianobabbler has babbled.
The Pianobabbler is a RonDavisMusic production. The Pianobabbler's blog posts appear weekly at pianobabber.com. Please remember to leave your comments and thoughts below. Subscribe to the RSS feed. And subscribe to RonDavisNews by clicking on the link, above right. And follow us on Twitter.
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