(posted on link)
Fred Pilcher wrote:
> Like those infuriating scrolling messages that some TV stations use?
I guess we are generally heading towards news coming through web pages because it offers more scope for user selection. What we need is an expectation that scrollers and continuously updating page gadgets can be "squelched" (to use the old radio term.)
As an interesting aside, it has been recommended that that infants under two are not left in front of TV. Our attention is automatically directed to movement and change by circuits that we have weak ability to control. This would be highly adaptive in a natural environment where change often signals risk and opportunity, but it is a biological mechanism that can be exploited in the constructed media environment where accumulated viewer attention drives profit. Apart from the relentless shot jumps in TV, fully static shot are now very rare; even title frames and logo shots are now made with enough movement to suck attention. In infants, the ability to control attention is virtually non-existent so they are forced to relentlessly follow screen changes.
Apart from the experience of being trapped in a Hell of undifferentiated valueless images, this is thought to have potentially serious developmental consequences as the infant doesn't have the time examine and model the visual field at an appropriate pace for developing visual discrimination.
Infants enjoy much simpler environments:
Older kids will typically have vastly improved ability to process images plus at least a modicum of capacity withhold attention. As we age, cognitive processing throughput becomes a scarcer resource, and the desire to not attend to crap increases. Well, mostly. :)