Whatever you think of the remote controlled drones the US is using in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, they generate a huge amount of video — 24 years worth so far. Predator drones employ only one camera, but the newer Reapers use ten. The Air Force has thousands of people watching these feeds in real time, but making effective use of that much material presents fundamental problems, and the military is turning to techniques used in sports broadcasting to annotate and categorize it all. With newer drones expected to carry either 30 or 65 cameras, the scale is unprecedented, and I suspect it’ll soon be driving basic research in high-volume storage, access and organization. This NY Times article provides the details.
Archive for the ‘Media and Society’ category
And You Thought You Were Buried
January 11, 2010Waiting Means Watching
January 5, 2010
Flat screens have made it possible to put TVs in every doctor’s office and, sure enough, they’ve now installed one in the waiting room at the West Side Health Center (part of the IATSE health plan). For your enjoyment, the audio is turned up to full listening volume. There were four of us sitting there recently. Three were reading, the fourth was looking around aimlessly. The TV was tuned to the Food Network. I asked if the sound could be muted, since nobody was watching. No, the receptionist was very clear about this. She has to make the TV available for patients. I didn’t bother to point out that I was a patient, too.
It used to be that putting a blaring TV in a waiting room was cheesy — something you’d find in low-rent diner or a Greyhound bus terminal. But today, with flat panels appearing everywhere, the unwritten rule is changing. Now everybody watches–and listens. In my book, that’s not an improvement. If you’re going to make me wait, at least let me do it in peace.
DVR Love at the Networks
November 2, 2009In another blow to conventional wisdom, the networks are now embracing the DVR. Yes, you read that right. The long-feared recorder, the device that was going to kill television as we know it, is now being seen as something of a savior. Why? Because we are finally measuring its effect. Instead of counting the number of people watching the show, Nielsen now measures something called “commercial plus three” — the number of people watching the commercials — within three days of airing. Well, it turns out that roughly half of the people watching recorded shows are not skipping the commercials. TV watching is a passive activity. We all knew that, but the folks at the networks just didn’t believe it and resisted the rating change.
What the new ratings show is that the DVR is increasing TV ratings — which now means the number of people watching the commercials — by 10 to 20%. In fierce network competition that’s a big number.
TV was supposed to kill cinema, the VCR was supposed to kill TV, and the DVR was supposed to kill network TV. Unintended consequences are always stronger than we think. Which is another way of saying that our ability to predict almost anything is pretty darn limited.
The details are here: DVR, Once TV’s Mortal Foe, Helps Ratings
Turn Off the AC
October 25, 2009
We in post-production use a lot of energy. It’s not always obvious — no blast furnaces are in evidence, after all — but when you add up all the devices we have running, often 24/7, you’re likely to come up with a big sum. The computer, the many monitors, the decks, the server: that’s a lot of little motors spinning and backlights lighting. And then, of course, there’s the heating and air conditioning. In our building, every room has its own thermostat, offering us the luxury of setting temperatures individually. And the thermostat comes with another little perk: an on/off switch.
As I was leaving the cutting room recently, I mentioned to a friend that I always turn the system off over the weekend. The response? “I don’t like to come in to a stuffy room in the morning.” I guess that’s a common concern. But as we look forward to the upcoming congressional debate on a big cap and trade system, we might consider some measures closer to home. One trivially easy thing we could all do is avoid heating, cooling (or lighting) empty rooms. If you’ve got a switch on your AC system, why not use it?
Multitaskers Ain’t Good at It
September 3, 2009In case you missed it, researchers at Stanford recently published a study about the abilities of heavy multitaskers. And they found that heavy multitaskers were less able to organize information, less able to ignore irrelevant information, less able to switch from one task to another. This is exactly the opposite of what the scientists expected.
Some key quotes:
“We kept looking for multitaskers’ advantages in this study. But we kept finding only disadvantages. We thought multitaskers were very much in control of information. It turns out, they were just getting it all confused.”
— Eyal Ophir, lead investigator.”The huge finding is, the more media people use the worse they are at using any media. We were totally shocked.” “Multitaskers were just lousy at everything.”
— Clifford I. Nass, investigator.
Details are in these two New York Times articles:
Study Finds People Who Multitask Often Bad at It
The Mediocre Multitasker
It seems that we are drawn to newness and novelty like moths to a flame. No wonder people are texting at the wheel. Call it information addiction. Chemicals not needed.
Dignity and Online Advertising
August 6, 2009The new head of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission is apparently interested in protecting consumers. This novel idea is borne out in an interesting NY Times article explaining his fundamental concerns about a key web business model, namely that we give up our privacy and allow ourselves to be tracked in exchange for “free” content. His name is David Vladeck, and he spent 26 years at a public-interest law firm, so he might actually have some bona fides regarding the protection of consumers.
The whole thing seems so odd to me. We are essentially being paid to watch ads — on TV or on the net. But we’re being paid at a rate that we have no control over, and it’s being done surreptitiously, with each advertiser secretly trying to get as much dirt about us as possible so as to figure out how they can get us to buy stuff — hopefully without us realizing that we’re being manipulated. Long term, it just doesn’t make sense in a democracy.
I vote for a simpler system — just pay me to watch ads and let me choose the ads I want to watch. Even better, auction off the ads — some advertisers would pay more for my time and some pay less. I, the consumer, can trade what I watch/earn for content. I can watch the ads whenever I want — no need to interrupt me or distract me. And if I don’t want to watch ads, well, I just pay for the internet or TV with real money.
Ads I choose to watch ought to be a whole lot more valuable to advertisers because I am actually interested in the product. Advertisers can learn about what I’m interested easily — no subliminal activities required. There’s no privacy issue — no internet tracking would be allowed, and none would be needed. Everybody is happy. I suspect that consumers would actually buy more.
But maybe I’m naive. Maybe they have to force feed us all this stuff or the world will come to an end (ie, the internet will cease to exist).
And yes, Vladeck did use the word “dignity” to talk about his goals for online advertising. What a concept.
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