A long time ago, you could get the biggest positive visual impact for your money by generating art, and if you wanted awe you could fund gardens and cathedrals. And lo, these areas were well-funded!
The printing press arrived. Now, you could get massive numbers of pamphlets and woodcuts for a fraction of the price of paintings. And lo, these areas were well-funded!
Then tv appeared. Now, if you wanted the greatest awe and the biggest positive visual impact for your money, you crafted something suitable for the new medium. And in that time, there were massive made-for-tv propaganda campaigns, and money poured into developing spacecraft, and we got our first awe-inspiring images of Earth from the moon.
Some even claim the Soviet Union was defeated by the view through a television screen of a better life in America.
And then we developed CGI and 3D MMORPGs. And lo, the space program defunded, as people built entire cities, entire planets in CGI for a tiny fraction of the cost!
At minimum it’s oversimplified. That’s why I called it a parable.
I appreciate the nuance in your comment even as it is. But I’m curious about the facts/narratives you have that disagree with it?
(My personal strongest murphyjitsu was that “space program defunding” was more complicated than this. If you know more about that than I do, I’d be curious to hear about it.)
Video games and porn don’t have any essential quality to them though we might like to come up with stories about them and their impact on society/evo-psycho implications, but they’re literally just the lowest $:hedons trade currently available.
A Parable on Visual Impact
A long time ago, you could get the biggest positive visual impact for your money by generating art, and if you wanted awe you could fund gardens and cathedrals. And lo, these areas were well-funded!
The printing press arrived. Now, you could get massive numbers of pamphlets and woodcuts for a fraction of the price of paintings. And lo, these areas were well-funded!
Then tv appeared. Now, if you wanted the greatest awe and the biggest positive visual impact for your money, you crafted something suitable for the new medium. And in that time, there were massive made-for-tv propaganda campaigns, and money poured into developing spacecraft, and we got our first awe-inspiring images of Earth from the moon.
Some even claim the Soviet Union was defeated by the view through a television screen of a better life in America.
And then we developed CGI and 3D MMORPGs. And lo, the space program defunded, as people built entire cities, entire planets in CGI for a tiny fraction of the cost!
While I don’t agree with this narrative, I really enjoyed the story, thanks for writing it!
At minimum it’s oversimplified. That’s why I called it a parable.
I appreciate the nuance in your comment even as it is. But I’m curious about the facts/narratives you have that disagree with it?
(My personal strongest murphyjitsu was that “space program defunding” was more complicated than this. If you know more about that than I do, I’d be curious to hear about it.)
Your murphyjitsu was correct (what were you imagine was failing here… our communication?)
I like the narrative where video games caused stagnation, but if indeed there is stagnation, I don’t believe they were in the top 10 factors :).
Edit: Big maybe at top 10, certainly not top 5.
Video games and porn don’t have any essential quality to them though we might like to come up with stories about them and their impact on society/evo-psycho implications, but they’re literally just the lowest $:hedons trade currently available.