Noise Rant by Clint
Have you ever considered how unnecessarily noisy software is on television shows and movies? Many a year ago, I had to watch three consecutive hours of television and documenting station breaks, commercials, promos, and so on for a broadcast class. The third hour had me watching CSI--don't ask me which city or country, as I don't care. For those unfamiliar, CSI follows decades of TV police dramas. Anyhow, I remember not enjoying it. But, I thought it extremely funny how many bleeps and bloops the investigators' software made.
Zoom in on a fingerprint = whoosh
Scan a hair sample = long, ascending beep
Enter key = blip
Apparently the CSI labs across the nation are just big, cacophonous, concentration-destroying workplaces. But, perhaps the low, blue lighting, the stylish glass walls, all the beautiful 20-40-somethings, and the numerous big-screen monitors, all of which seem to be commonplace with the laboratories and headquarters in the modern police drama, would make up for the unnecessary computer noise.
Ever since seeing that CSI, I have noticed that almost all movies and tv programs cannot resist the noisy software. Perhaps there is a media heritage to all this. Think back to 50's and 60's sci-fi for a moment. Do you not conjure up images of noisy supercomputers with huge panels with expanses of back-lit buttons, flashing randomly? How about all of those analogue beeps and blips? It's all the same--just digital nowadays.
There are actually companies "out there" that are contracted to create the fake software for TV and film. It makes you wonder if the computers at these companies have OS's that are cram-packed with these noises bound to every keystroke.
And, on a sidenote, how about the send/receive noises on instant messaging programs? Who in the hell thought it a good idea to make that default to the program? Vomit.
Someone (Josh Spears? Ryan Brown? Norman Maynard?) once told me that one of the professors they knew had all their keys (on their keyboard) bound to noises extracted from one of the keyboard-like interfaces on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Having to work within an audible vicinity would fast get my foot into a noisy, head-kicking mood.
Zoom in on a fingerprint = whoosh
Scan a hair sample = long, ascending beep
Enter key = blip
Apparently the CSI labs across the nation are just big, cacophonous, concentration-destroying workplaces. But, perhaps the low, blue lighting, the stylish glass walls, all the beautiful 20-40-somethings, and the numerous big-screen monitors, all of which seem to be commonplace with the laboratories and headquarters in the modern police drama, would make up for the unnecessary computer noise.
Ever since seeing that CSI, I have noticed that almost all movies and tv programs cannot resist the noisy software. Perhaps there is a media heritage to all this. Think back to 50's and 60's sci-fi for a moment. Do you not conjure up images of noisy supercomputers with huge panels with expanses of back-lit buttons, flashing randomly? How about all of those analogue beeps and blips? It's all the same--just digital nowadays.
There are actually companies "out there" that are contracted to create the fake software for TV and film. It makes you wonder if the computers at these companies have OS's that are cram-packed with these noises bound to every keystroke.
And, on a sidenote, how about the send/receive noises on instant messaging programs? Who in the hell thought it a good idea to make that default to the program? Vomit.
Someone (Josh Spears? Ryan Brown? Norman Maynard?) once told me that one of the professors they knew had all their keys (on their keyboard) bound to noises extracted from one of the keyboard-like interfaces on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Having to work within an audible vicinity would fast get my foot into a noisy, head-kicking mood.
I also love how the DNA analysis software on those crime shows has little animated double helices spinning, pulsing, and throbbing on the screen.
One of the more realistic computer scenes in a movie is in the matrix, when Trinity is hacking into some remote computer. She is actually using a unix command prompt with real unix commands. I don't know how she did it, though--there were no glossy progress bars or blinking "SECURITY CODE BROKEN" prompts to tell her she was finished...
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2:09 PM