1936 Perspective on Television

An Anonymous Coward writes "The New Yorker is running an article from their archives from 1936. In it, E.B.White (author of Charlotte's Web) discusses a demonstration he attended of the current state of television, which didn't impress him at all."

Comments

Very interesting....

[sixSecondsOfDefeat]

Oddly enough, EB white had been known to do significant work in Alan Turing in the development of a perfect AI model. As noted, EB white brought, "creativity and imagination to mathematics", in light of the little known fact that White WAS a physics major, and an expert in syllogistic systems.

Apparently Turing also shared many of the same political beliefs as him as well.

Just a strange little fact i guess that would indirectly affect us in the internet community.

Re:Very interesting....

[bgfay]

E.B. White was a physics major? And what do you base this on? White went to Cornell to learn to be a writer. He didn't go there to learn physics. And where do you get the Turing connection. I've studied E.B. White for many years and have never come across it.

I doubt that E.B. White had much to do with technology beyone his typewriter. He used to keep the telephone in a closet because it bothered him so much. He missed the days of an operator. He hated having his kitchen modernized, he preferred a sail to an engine.

Probably his one love in the technological world was his Model T. Everyone should read three short books by E.B. White. _Welcome to New York_ was great already, but after September 11 is just gorgeous. _Farewell, My Lovely_ is his love story with the Model T, and _Stuart Little_ is still the funniest and most wonderful of his children's books. That it was largely banned on its release is still funny.

But White and physics...well, that's a bit more than I can get behind.

Behind the times... even for 1936

[Anonymous Coward]

I know each country likes to believe they invented Radio, TV, the lightbulb etc, however by 1936 the BBC already had a mature 405 line service up and running in England, they were doing this sort of experimental stuff with Baird equipment in the late 20's.

Malcolm Gladwell's book review.

[mahlen]

More interesting, I think, is the ever-thoughtful Malcolm Gladwell's review of two books about Philo T. Farnsworth. Contrary to the expected take of how small genius inventors are destroyed by large credit-stealing corporations, Gladwell argues that corporations are the safest and sanest way to let genius inventors concentrate on inventing. Worth reading.

mahlen

"In Trash Tango, the human race has become so feeble that the alien invasion of Earth occurs by means of a memo." -- Steve Aylett, _slaughtermatic_

Re:Storytelling - a dying art?

[Bodrius]

Well, let's see what happened to series that tried to tell a continuing story:

- X-Files tried and very successfully told a good story through its mythology episodes. Guess what: what people complain about the X-Files are the mythology episodes. They demanded more independent episodes, "alien or freak of the week" stories. Their words are typically along the lines of "I can't skip it for a week or two because when I come back, I don't know what's going on".
So the X-Files ended up being a mixture of independent episodes, independent mythologies (so you could pay attention for only a season), and weird malabarisms to tie the mythologies of each season together. This was partly done to keep the audience interested as mentioned above, and partly to keep milking the series after each mythology ended.
A problem with good storytelling is that, in order to tell a good story, you need a beginning, development, and an ending. Unless you're remarkably inspired that's hard to build on-the-spot, but if you tell the networks you plan to finish the series in exactly 3 seasons they are not going to be happy. If the show is bad, they'll cancel it before, but if the show is good, they want to keep it running for as long as possible.

- Millenium tried to do the same as the X-files mythology. It had great character development, a good story to tell, great production values... and no one watched it because they didn't understand what was going on.

- Babylon 5 was the most ambitious series in that sense of storytelling. Continuous story, almost no isolated episodes, pre-planned five seasons... and is considered the geekiest show ever because you either have seen all of it from the beginning, or you don't know what the big deal is about.
Mainstream interest degenerated in a direct correlation with the development of the story, in spite of big compromises to try to bring new viewers to the series.

On the other hand, Star Trek has been successful mostly because it does not depend on real storytelling. Almost every episode is completely independent of each other, and each issue is either completely resolved in an episode, in a series of two-three episodes, or will never be resolved. Watch TNG any time, in any order... you'll notice it just has better execution of the "hit the reset button".

I agree with you with the need for decent storytelling, and that this depends mostly on continuity, as it is really hard to pack good stories and character development in a couple of episodes.

Unfortunately, the general public does not.

They don't have the time or the will to pay attention to a story periodically for that long, and the networks know it (they would probably be reading books if they did). Continuity helps to build a cult out of people who cares, which helps to hype something up to the mainstream media, but the networks are careful not to overdo it, as alienating the mainstream in preference is a bad market move.

They will put up with the storytelling in the movies because, in order to go to the movies, they have planned already to dedicate their attention to that story for as long, and only as long, as the movie takes.

Basicly, they are willing to read a book in one sitting, but if they have to stop at a particular chapter, and then remember what they have seen by the time they watch the next chapter, they get annoyed... or worse.

This is a fundamental problem with television which may or may not be solved with Tivo and similar systems, where the rythm to watch the story is not as imposed.

I also enjoy that about Anime: it tends to have a sense of story, as opposed to the recurring sketch that is a modern sitcom. But that is just more common in Anime, not prevalent. Some of the most popular Anime series have no story development whatsoever, and that happens to be their main appeal (Ranma comes to mind, Slayers), have a background story that is completely irrelevant/accesory (late Dragonball Z), or are just plain crap (too much to mention).

So just don't put all your hopes on Anime, if you haven't been exposed to that much of it you might be really disappointed. It's just a new market where you might find a bit more of what you're looking for. You may be lucky, or not, but you probably still have to search a bit.

Series I recommend for storytelling (in case you haven't seen them yet): Lain, Evangelion, Shojo Kakumei Utena, Noir, Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop...

Re:Megacycle

[RevRigel]

1mHz = .001 Hz
1MHz = 1e6 Hz

Re:Megacycle

[Hollinger]

Try this link. It looks like the low end was around 40-50 MHz.