Tuesday, February 09, 2010

The "Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad" Draws Ever Closer

That title is a throwaway reference to Infinite Jest, a great novel by David Foster Wallace that I couldn't finish. As far as I could tell, it might have involved a movie that was so compelling that people couldn't stop watching it. Back in 1996 when it was published, that idea was fiction, but now, neurocinematographers are working to make it a regular Friday night fact. By using fMRI, they can tell exactly which parts of a movie are the most exciting and eliminate the parts that drag. Someday we'll be looking back at Avatar as the progenitor of a new kind of movie, where there is no plot at all. And we'll love it. And if not, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our (movie) stars, but in ourselves,"
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1 comment:

  1. hartofak5:15 PM

    That...is terrifying. And not *just* because Infinite Jest involves people dying in their own excrement because they're so blindingly entertained.

    I'm not sure we should be letting someone's pleasure sensors be deciding what's best for them, after all...*

    *oops, I accidentally rejected this comment from Zenith, but it does allow me to add this footnote which is sort of a DFW touch

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