I barely even watch tv, and I don't like movies. There a a few shows on tv that I do watch, but for those, I have a few apps on my iPad that can play those shows. No, for me the distractions are video games.
Sometimes it's easier just to sit back and be entertained than to create your own entertainment.
Another thing to note imaginative people created tv and video games (and stuff), and yet those imaginative inventions are ending up undoing the imagination of their consumers.
[Playing off the tone of THAT guy's post not the initial] I barly watch TV at all. My main trip-up is YouTube, I have to say that it consumes my nights at times, as I will stay up late (10:30 is late for me, anyway) watching videos. I don't play games much and I only watch videos at night (when my roommate would be disturbed by the light created by working on projects :-) ) but I still have trouble being imaginative at times. I sometimes wait around, or just sit at my desk and think, until a project idea hits me. In the meantime, I usually work on learning something new, which seems to entertain me enough.
The sad thing is that one day I will probably make devices that allow people to be even less imaginative.
I've spent the last week learning how to make iPhone apps, which has to be the biggest dip into that market. :-(
Another thing to note imaginative people created tv and video games (and stuff), and yet those imaginative inventions are ending up undoing the imagination of their consumers.
Goodness. I have cooked up a mathematical transform, but damn! It's going to undo the imaginations of the kids later! Yeah, it's something of a graphical engineering fusion. What should I gonna do?
By the way I barely watched TV too... except for the occasional TV drama. That's about it though, I watched funny youtube videos and stuff too.
I admit that I have "cinematic narcolepsy" - it runs in my family. My brother almost slept in the Avatar and cooked his own version of that movie in his head instead for the last few hours of the show. The latest movie I watched was Kung Fu Panda 2 but I admit I watched it because of a comedy factor. Thankfully my family didn't slept through this one - 'cause we all like watching animals and comedy to keep us going.
I can't guarantee myself for the Transformers series though.
The only movie during which I've ever fallen asleep in a theater -- twice no less -- was the Ipcress File (1965): a stultifying bore that makes me wonder how it ever helped to further Michael Caine's cinematic career. 'Makes me sleepy just thinking about it.
And that's the third factor I see here. Over the last 15 years, a whole lot of things have been devalued. The product of labor, in terms of buying power per hour worked, is generally down overall, despite a lot of inexpensive items out there. Other costs rise, and with that diminished overall buying power, more hours are required of everybody, again generally. My own experience here is 40 hours appears never acceptable any more, and I'm not sure how it happened, but it has happened to most people I know. Not all, but most.
All these combined make people tired and drained. That's on top of the many distractions we have in play today. Is there any wonder curiosity is blunted? I don't think so. Truth is, people may well be curious, but they know they probably don't have the time capacity to really follow through, so they don't, optimizing the time they do have.
Everything now in this universe is packaged. It's all up in a bundle, like microwavable pizza and instant coffee. And funny thing is, everything is 'encapsulated' as well. No one should bother why or how the interiors worked. It just worked. On many occasions we are told not to be nosy about how it works, because it works and that's why it work for all of us. Leave the 'how, what and why' back to the designers.
For me, I care a bit of how the remote control or the little electronic handheld game worked. It isn't magic, I know. But I'm curious. All these engineering educations makes me want for more knowledge however. The thirst for all these knowledge is hard to be quenched.
The same curiousity can be 'jumpstarted' back by effective education, and advertising.
I still wanted Tesco and Carrefour to pack and sell simple Arduino clones or a simple processor kits to be placed in the proper section. This will start the journey of electronics, software and hardware world. Radioshack is doing that, but not in SE Asia. In a country in SE Asia, selling of those kits are still limited at a specific area of the city, or must be ordered online.
The thrust of your post is "It seems that our current society seems to lack imagination".
Well, perhaps, but I've noticed that in my lifetime a lot have things have creative things have occurred:
My TV went from black and white to color to 3D.
It's display went flat, wide and big.
My radio went from noisy mono AM to clean stereo FM to digital.
The computer arrived into my house and evolved from a 8 bit toy to a 64 bit monster with gigs of RAM and tera bytes of disk storage.
My telephone became detached from the wall and jumped into my pocket complete with a high res screen, a compute equal to that on my desk a few years back.
The internet and all the amazing things to be found on it arrived.
And so on and so on. That's before we get onto advances in materials science, medicine or agriculture and whatever.
My conclusion is that in order for all this to be occurring there must be a lot of very bright imaginative people all around the world thinking about such things. Fortunately from time to time I even get to meet or work with such people.
So whilst the majority that you are observing may well now be glued to their couches watching TV or lost in computer games and have totally lost curiosity in "reality" I'm not sure that the situation is much different than it was ten or a hundred or a thousand years ago. It's probably always been may be less than 10% of the population that get a buzz out of thinking, experimenting problem solving and generally moving the human race forward.
I'm reminded of the early days of the steam engine when James Watt teamed up with the industrialist Mathew Bolton. One recurring problem they had was getting their workforce or anyone who knew anything about engineering to stay sober long enough to actually do anything.
Comments
My problem.
Sometimes it's easier just to sit back and be entertained than to create your own entertainment.
Another thing to note imaginative people created tv and video games (and stuff), and yet those imaginative inventions are ending up undoing the imagination of their consumers.
The sad thing is that one day I will probably make devices that allow people to be even less imaginative.
I've spent the last week learning how to make iPhone apps, which has to be the biggest dip into that market. :-(
Goodness. I have cooked up a mathematical transform, but damn! It's going to undo the imaginations of the kids later! Yeah, it's something of a graphical engineering fusion. What should I gonna do?
By the way I barely watched TV too... except for the occasional TV drama. That's about it though, I watched funny youtube videos and stuff too.
I admit that I have "cinematic narcolepsy" - it runs in my family. My brother almost slept in the Avatar and cooked his own version of that movie in his head instead for the last few hours of the show. The latest movie I watched was Kung Fu Panda 2 but I admit I watched it because of a comedy factor. Thankfully my family didn't slept through this one - 'cause we all like watching animals and comedy to keep us going.
I can't guarantee myself for the Transformers series though.
-Phil
"Hiiiiiiiiiii Jim!"
My name is Dave and I spend too much time worrying about my projects instead of working on my projects.
Everything now in this universe is packaged. It's all up in a bundle, like microwavable pizza and instant coffee. And funny thing is, everything is 'encapsulated' as well. No one should bother why or how the interiors worked. It just worked. On many occasions we are told not to be nosy about how it works, because it works and that's why it work for all of us. Leave the 'how, what and why' back to the designers.
For me, I care a bit of how the remote control or the little electronic handheld game worked. It isn't magic, I know. But I'm curious. All these engineering educations makes me want for more knowledge however. The thirst for all these knowledge is hard to be quenched.
The same curiousity can be 'jumpstarted' back by effective education, and advertising.
I still wanted Tesco and Carrefour to pack and sell simple Arduino clones or a simple processor kits to be placed in the proper section. This will start the journey of electronics, software and hardware world. Radioshack is doing that, but not in SE Asia. In a country in SE Asia, selling of those kits are still limited at a specific area of the city, or must be ordered online.
The thrust of your post is "It seems that our current society seems to lack imagination".
Well, perhaps, but I've noticed that in my lifetime a lot have things have creative things have occurred:
My TV went from black and white to color to 3D.
It's display went flat, wide and big.
My radio went from noisy mono AM to clean stereo FM to digital.
The computer arrived into my house and evolved from a 8 bit toy to a 64 bit monster with gigs of RAM and tera bytes of disk storage.
My telephone became detached from the wall and jumped into my pocket complete with a high res screen, a compute equal to that on my desk a few years back.
The internet and all the amazing things to be found on it arrived.
And so on and so on. That's before we get onto advances in materials science, medicine or agriculture and whatever.
My conclusion is that in order for all this to be occurring there must be a lot of very bright imaginative people all around the world thinking about such things. Fortunately from time to time I even get to meet or work with such people.
So whilst the majority that you are observing may well now be glued to their couches watching TV or lost in computer games and have totally lost curiosity in "reality" I'm not sure that the situation is much different than it was ten or a hundred or a thousand years ago. It's probably always been may be less than 10% of the population that get a buzz out of thinking, experimenting problem solving and generally moving the human race forward.
I'm reminded of the early days of the steam engine when James Watt teamed up with the industrialist Mathew Bolton. One recurring problem they had was getting their workforce or anyone who knew anything about engineering to stay sober long enough to actually do anything.