3 D TV Curse

News comes from the tech world that we may be watching 3 D TV sooner than later. Uh....that is for those who still find enough programing to watch on the idiot box. Sony and Panasonic say they will release home 3-D television systems in 2010. Mitsubishi and PVC are reported to be working on similar products. This innovation will bring the same 3 D theater images to your TV screen that you see in movie theaters, and the people who are supposed to know say the upgrade is similar in scope to what people experienced when moving from black and white images to color or from standard definition TV to Hi Def.

So why am I not excited, even under whelmed? First, watchers of the Hi Def screens will have to wear those silly looking 3-D glasses, and the introduction of new technology always is in a primitive form to what it will be. The first 3 D TV may not be much of a technological upgrade to what we have.

But wait! The biggest reason I refuse to cheer this tech upgrade is that the same imbecile programing we get on TV today will be shown in 3D tomorrow. Ugh! Reality TV is awful enough as is. 3 D images of it may make it even worse. What good is watching bad programming in improved visual form? This points to the fact that in today's world new technology improvements in visual or audio mediums always precede improvements in the programming that the technology delivers to us. The chicken (the technology) is clearly ahead of the egg (creative art). But we should know that already because we have seen that in the case of the cell phone, that technology has nearly crushed all manners and civility when users chatter on them in public. And what about those auto stereo systems? The technology is great and it produces a clear and loud sound. Uh...too loud when in the hands of people who blast their unwanted music (noise) for all who don't want to hear. Name a technology we use in public and you can name at least two offensive aspect to how it is used.

I detect a natural law at work here. Hmmmmmmmm Let me compose the James Law. It is that "as audio/video technology improves, humans adopt it so quickly they forget they have a social responsibility to use it for the better rather than to degrade society or themselves by seeking personal pleasure from it."

Can anyone who remembers pre cell phone days, pre TV times, pre personal auto stereo times and on and on....can that person honestly say that society's civility level has been ennobled by those technologies? And more importantly, will humans ever realize that fact and begin to fight to regain both civility and the use of the imaginative part of our technologically deadened brains? You tell me?