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	May 12, 2003

WHY WIDESCREEN TV AND LANDSCAPE MONITORS MAKE NO SENSE There is a hysterical debate going on between supporters and opponents of widescreen (16/9 ratio) versus traditional (4/3 ratio) video screen sizes. Traditional-ratio supporters decry 'black bars' (at top and bottom, when you view a widescreen film on a traditional screen) as wasted space. Widescreen-ratio supporters decry 'picture jag' (caused by the editor panning and scanning a film made in 16/9 so that it fills a 4/3 screen without missing important peripheral events) as destroying the filmmakers' artistry. Both sides completely miss the point. The point is that movie-makers started filming in widescreen for a reason a long time ago. The reason was not because this is the natural analogue of the human field of vision. Yes, we have two eyes side by side, and our total field of vision is widescreen. But that was likely a Darwinian evolution so we could catch sight of predators coming from the side. The reality is that our focused field of vision is much closer to the traditional 4/3 ratio. The real reason movies are filmed in widescreen is a commercial one. You can fit more theatre seats around a wide screen than around a 4/3 screen. Of course, the seats at the side are often crappy, especially if you're trying to see something at the other end of the screen. Tough: you should have got to the theatre earlier. The problem is, most movies today get more of their viewership and revenues from television watchers than from theatre-goers. There is no such constraint in your living room. In fact, you have to scan your eyes (or your head, depending on the size of your TV and your proximity to it) from side to side when you watch a widescreen film on TV anyway. You are put, unnecessarily, in exactly in the same position as the person in the theatre. But if the media conglomerates can get you to buy your TV in a widescreen format, then they win two ways: They don't have to spend money on pan-and-scan editing to fit the movie on the standard screen, and they shut up the 'black bar' complainers as 'old-technology luddites'. No matter that the widescreen format doesn't make sense from a consumer perspective. Now I'm sure that someone reading this will say that it's undemocratic to deprive people of the right to scan across the screen to see whatever they want to look at, instead of having the pan-and-scan editor make that choice for them. But that's easy to accomplish in any format: we just need to reward filmmakers who put interesting things in the background of their films and pan back far enough that the viewer who is not interested in the close-up can look at them instead. The answer isn't to make television screens wider, it's to make movie screens taller. But what about the new cameras with panorama view, I hear someone saying? Don't they support the logic of widescreen as the 'natural' viewing ratio? I would argue that most photographers take the vast majority of their shots in normal mode rather than panorama mode because widescreen is rarely the most visually interesting or useful format. In fact I would guess photographers shoot photos in portrait mode (turning the camera sideways) far more often than they shoot in panorama mode. Ever watched something go up or down (an airplane or a stunt jumper) on a widescreen? Not pretty. Next argument: Take a look at the screen you're reading this on. Now look at something written on letter-size paper. Now look at something written on legal-size paper. Finally, take a look at a book page.  Which do you find easiest to read? There is a reason that books and magazines are almost invariably in portrait (taller-than-wide) orientation (and why newspapers still use 'column' format). It's because it's difficult to read blocks of text wider than about 5-6". So portrait format is the most economical way to get the most legible text into the smallest area. So why are most computer screens still in landscape format? No, not so you can watch movies on them. It's because of the keyboard. For the ever-more-dominant laptop, it's easier to put an awkward-shaped screen on a comfortable keyboard than the other way around. The best answer for this, of course, is a hinged monitor . So by all means spend your money on plasma screens or HDTV-ready screens. But don't let the economics of movie theatre design dictate the shape of your television. And next time you're in the market for a new PC, ask the seller (or your company's purchaser) whether you can have that screen sideways, please. And if your blog text is wider than 6", please widen your margins, you're giving me a headache. Postscript: Chris at Glacial Erratics has sold me on bifurcated square screens and square paper (see comments). 3:11:33 PM  trackback []  comment []

DANGEROUS MEME #2: WHY YOU HATE YOUR JOB From Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization, on wage slavery: Ordinary businesses don't burden themselves with obligations to people. Most obviously, they don't "take care" of their workers. To do so would introduce them to a whole suite of problems in which there's no profit whatever. Instead, they pay salaries and expect workers to take care of themselves. From the company's point of view, it doesn't matter whether the salary is adequate for any particular worker. It's not the company's fault if the worker has a large family to take care of, or an ailing parent to support, or is just a bad manager of money. The company can afford to be hard-nosed about this. It doesn't risk losing a worker to a competitor, because the competitors are equally hard-nosed about it. This unspoken agreement among corporations to limit their obligation to issuing a paycheck is precisely what gives our society its prison ambiance. Workers have no way out. Whether they move from company to company or nation to nation, their employers' obligation ends with the paycheck, an arrangement that obviously suits employers very well. Prisons are always arranged to suit the wardens. The fact that 60% of us believe we are under-employed, and are not doing the things we do best or even things we like doing, attests to how pervasive this wage slavery has become. Setting up a tribal* venture is the only way out of the prison. In the words of Buckminster Fuller, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." (*A tribal venture is an enterprise run by a self-organized, self-selected non-hierarchical group, each member of which contributes importantly to the group's ability to make a living and takes complete responsibility for the welfare of all members of the venture. That doesn't mean the members live together. A tribal venture is not the same as a family business or a commune. A tribal venture's ultimate purpose, its measure of success, is its ability to provide for the welfare and well-being of its members, all of its members, as equals and as they define well-being. Tribal ventures don't have absentee shareholders, so profit per se doesn't matter.) 12:51:50 PM  trackback []  comment []

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