Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Finding Better Tech Broadcasts?

Posted by kdawson on from the show's-the-thing dept.

BearGrylls writes "As a young lad and aspiring technologist I have found shows like Revision3's 'The Broken' and 'Systm' to be entertaining, informative, and, most importantly, thorough. As time has gone on revision3 has kept some of the tech-related shows, but dumbed them down to appeal to a larger audience. This annoyed me, but I've continued to be a loyal viewer of their tech shows anyway. However, I suspect this trend to continue and my disappointment to grow. Where can I find tech shows that dive deep into projects and discussions instead of simply skimming the surface?"

6 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Educational TV by mac1235 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The show isn't just getting dumber, you're also getting smarter.

    1. Re:Educational TV by theaveng · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sci-Fi Channel - yet another channel that was dumbed down. I remember when they had "talk shows" that visited conventions to meet the fans, discussed new technologies that were emerging, and interviewed authors about their latest books. Now the channel fills its primetime slots with "Scared Stupid", "Dishonest Seances", and other hokey nonsense.

      --
      FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
    2. Re:Educational TV by yttrstein · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That happened to me with Slashdot many years ago. I noticed one day while I was sitting on my cube reading the comments for some post about network security...and I realized that the comments were generally completely factually incorrect, the theories being handed up were generally weak, and the article itself was pitted with subjectivity and blurred facts.

      I thought Slashdot was changing then too, but it wasn't. It turns out that while I wasn't paying attention, I'd become more experienced in the ways of such things than the average Slashdot poster.

      Or editor for that matter.

    3. Re:Educational TV by Goldberg's+Pants · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Then IMO you have a responsibility to CORRECT those wrong assertions. Not all of them, but at least one or two, or else nobody else is going to learn.

      Just a thought.

  2. Re:I have seen the same by 16K+Ram+Pack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What I think is happening is that news and factual reporting is a deeper fracture between a "TV" and an "internet" audience.

    The internet now provides news in incredible depth. If you read bloggers who really know their subject, you'll get far more depth than TV ever gave you, and often more depth than most newspapers. You ever heard a TV economics reporter explaining the Laffer Curve or Basquiat's Broken Window Fallacy? You just never get that stuff. When the political parties were arguing about post office closures, not one journalism did the digging that showed that it was basically an issue of EU subsidies (that the government couldn't fund Post Offices).

    On the other hand, TV news is incredibly dumb now. A story like Kerry Katona being made bankrupt never made the news when I was a kid. It was almost entirely hard news.

    If people want to know why there's a real lack of hard science on TV, it's for this reason. Because the science audience is gone. They're watching video clips on YouTube or reading papers about science. Science coverage on TV is more "technology" now (which actually just means gadget reporting).

  3. Forget your television. by Poodleboy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you want to learn about something complex and nuanced, then your television is the wrong place to look. It has been argued by sociologists like Neil Postman in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, and even by admen themselves, like Jerry Mander in his Four Arguments for The Elimination of Television, that the medium of television is a poor conduit for complex ideas.

    Even the networks which have not arguably been "dumbed down," like the History Channel mentioned here, are a pretty poor provider of accurate detail, although they are certainly entertaining. For example, the "Engineering an Empire" program covering they Byzantines suggested that the Emperor Justinian was a brilliant leader, whereas in fact he was not a visionary at all, but an easily manipulated tool whose military victories in Europe, vaunted by the program, were provided by his general Belisarius (cf. Lord Mahon's The Life of Belisarius).

    Personally, I recommend books for the fundamentals and periodicals from the IEEE or ACM for the leading edge. Television is only good for a broad overview of the current buzz, not for diving deep into anything.