I saw The Avengers in 3D this afternoon and it made me wonder if I wasn’t doing incremental harm to my finely tuned survival instincts. You and I were born with some amazing skills at recognizing, and avoiding, danger. Think about it…in a split second we can see, and react, to something that is headed our way. We duck or swerve to avoid a flying object that might otherwise take us out. So, here’s what I’m thinking. Every time we have a virtual 3D experience with a flying object that DOESN’T do us harm, that part of our brain that is well trained to react in a split second registers a direct hit with no consequences. In other words, it has been fooled by the visual artistry that makes 3D action films so much fun. You may have heard the old saying, “fool me once, shame on you…fool me twice, shame on me.” Every technology comes with hidden consequences. Consider the loss of penmanship since keyboarding took its place. Others have argued that ready access to the internet and Google is reducing our capacity to remember. I can imagine a future where we are a nanosecond or two slower to react because of the de-evolution of our highly-refined reaction instinct. Something to think about the next time you are standing in line to see the latest 3D blockbuster.
Mass Communication, [multi]media, methodology and much, much more!
I had never thought about the implications of 3-D movies affecting our reflexes. I only saw the point that to some, the 3-D styling causes nausea which makes some uncomfortable. I also believe that 3-D movies, while helping to engulf and capture the movie experience, are being too commercialized and it removes some of the magic. It causes movie makers to focus less on story telling and more on the graphics. Without the story, it only becomes a matter of time before movies become purely one epileptic nightmare.
I agree to some extent that watching 3-D movies could affect the reflexes of viewers, but I believe that eventually humans will adapt to this technology. There will always be a learning curve with any new experience, and with any learning curve there will always be negative effects. For example, when humans switched from oral to written records, the ability to recite stories from memory was lost, but humanity gained the ability to chronicle history. I truly hope that the human brain will evolve enough to tell the difference between actual reality and reality that has been fabricated.
Dorothy Perea
Media and Society
Viewing movies in 3D on a regular basis may slow our reaction/response time some. However, it may also encourage us to process information differently. Is different really that bad? Think about how many people had to get chased by predator species before they realized if they didn’t run, they wouldn’t be chased. I’m not saying that is the rule all the time, but generally speaking it’s a good survival tip. Our brains are capable of far more than we know! Humans have survived thousands of years, primarily because of their ability to adapt to their environment. We live in a more technologically advanced world that is continuing to grow and change. Social media plays an important role in implementing these growths and changes. In order to adapt to the growth and change of our world, a change in our mental processes and perception of said medias is required.
Jonathan Torres
September 17th
Media and Society
Reading this article was interesting for the reason that as i have seen tons of 3D movies, and i agree with that i can slow our reaction as you look from generation to generation our pinmanship has decreased from good to bad from the use of computers and onces you have seen enough movies after time your reaction time can slow down especially if 3D movies are the only movies mad in the near future. Also 3D movies will affect a younger audience as there brain develops watching 3D movies at a young age can greatly affect there reaction time and it seems that this has already started by Disney bringing back alot of their older movies and making them 3D for younger kids to watch.
The first thing that comes to mind to me is if this is fact or fiction. It is a compelling argument. I know if I simply talk to my parents about today’s society, they would tell me that the human race is going down to tubes because of technology. I know that my ability to spell decreased. I have heard the reason is because of texting so much. I can see how 3D movies would affect our reaction time. This blog relates to class from the advancement of technology stand point. I know that the more advanced we become, the lazier we get.
Ever since I was little I have never been able to sit through an entire 3D film without getting a headache or the feel of motion sickness. Alot of people say seeing these kinds of movies are fine on occasion, but the crazy thing is the majority audience the movie directors gear towards are children. Today older kid films, such as Finding Nemo, are being brought back to theaters a second time in 3D. Whether it effects your health or not is up in the air in my opinion. They bring back alot of Disney movies in 3D form and have been consistant with them today.
Kurt Pineda
Prof. E
Media and Society
September 17th 2012
In my personal opinion this 3-D dilemma might effect younger children that are only watching these movies at the theater and now at home. I’m still fine I feel that I have great hand eyed coordination; But I never really watch 3-Dimmensional movies just because they give me a raging head ache. So far there have been cases where children’s have been experiencing some side effects due to the 3-D. But gamers, some of whom queued overnight to become the first to own it, are already reporting side-effects including dizziness, nausea and headaches.
professor Martin Banks believes that 3D violates the normal rules of perception because the normal pattern in the brain is significantly altered, which can then lead to headaches, blurry vision and an overall exhausted feeling. This paragraph is quoted by Dina Khatib Online Observations Editor.
Over all this really keeps me from wanting to go and see movies that have anything to do with 3-D , not only because I have experienced the headaches but because it is proven from Dina Khatib.
This is an interesting thought to me, to say that I see several 3D movies my brain is starting to learn that not all flying objects hit you. I can agree with this, simply because i have seen the shortened memory and attention spans of my friend and me because of the different search engines, we can have any answer delivered to us within seconds. My hand writing as always been bad, but i think is has gotten worse due to the computer and keyboards. Who in the future is going to have to worry about writing skills when computers are rising up in school, typing skills will over come writing. So saying that over exposure to 3D media is going to de-evolve my brain and reaction time, yeah I can see that, but only after overexposer to this type of media. One movie, not so much.
So how do you explain my inability to react in time to shield myself from the brilliance of this post? Seriously though – cool thought! 🙂