I’m not going to go off on a rant here regarding the astounding excess of marketing related specifications and statistics that are poured over everything you might ever want to consider buying like so much syrup and sugar. For example, an LCD TV I was considering not long ago included, among other tid bits, these variables and the relevant values for the particular model I was looking at:

Display Type: Widescreen LCD
Screen Size: 22″
Pixel Pitch: 0.258 mm
Display Area: 433.44 mm x 270.9 mm
Display Format: 16:9 Wide LCD
Vertical Refresh Rate: 56 ~ 75 Hz
Horizontal Frequency: 30 ~ 81 kHz
Contrast Ratio: 1000:01:00
Dynamic Contrast Ratio: 10000:1
Brightness: 300 cd/m²
Response Time: 5 ms
Horizontal Viewing Angle: 170 degrees
Vertical Viewing Angle: 160 degrees

Now there is a very real purpose for these numbers – so that two people in a bar or coffee shop or proctologist’s waiting room can have a debate as to whose 60” television set is superior (and, the unspoken assumption, which individual is therefore implied as being superior in some completely meaningless and juvenile way). Such discussions used to have to rely on one’s ability to use adjectives and hyperbole to describe just how amazingly stupendous the quality of the image of one’s TV is. Such subjective measurements do not form a very satisfying base for an argument that one hopes will determine a clear cut winner in such passionately fought battles, and so here we have lists such as the one shown above. The statement “My TV is clearer than yours” can now be made into a devastatingly effective argument “My TV possesses a dynamic contrast ratio of 10000:1, which clearly provides a finer quality image than the pathetic 5000:1 ratio your TV is capable of. “

Of course, is such discourse necessary, enlightening, progressive, fun, or in any way encouraged or sought after by the author of this blog? No. I immediately start to feel very weary when one of these kinds of conversations get fired up. In fact any conversation to which the only possible goal is to establish that one thing, or person, or concept or letter of the alphabet is “better” than another, to establish why something is “the best”, often without defining any kind of context that might make the conclusion actually useful, is only good for cultivating deep throbbing headaches. Yet, I understand life has an awful lot of moments when two people have a need to pass the time and this is perhaps just as good as any other options immediately available, such as actually watching TV versus debating the quality of the apparatus which delivers the programming.

So, why did I get fascinated by the statistics listed above and why do I recount them here if I do not intend to memorize them for the purpose of having the kinds of discussions I just said I would prefer to never have?

The first thought was along the lines of wondering what the statistics would be if some one listed the specifications of my eyeballs. The TV is an output generating device, my eyeballs are the receivers of that output and my brain the device that processes that output and turns it into whatever it is my “mind” needs to understand what the point of the output is, and from there, figure out what I think of it or how I feel about it. So, as the quality of the output increases (this is debatable in and of itself, but glossing over some parts here to keep things rolling) at what point does it surpass the capabilities of my input device? When does it overrun the buffers between my eyeballs and my brain? At what point does my viewing and processing equipment cease to be able to distinguish the subtle difference between one level of Dynamic Contrast Ratio from the next? And if I get the TV home and realize my built in inputs cannot handle the level of output from my new TV can I take it back and exchange it for a TV that “fits”?

Now take that line of thinking and start to try and apply it to notions of how those same hardwired input devices define the reality my mind is forced to accept, and then how those devices might be enhanced or changed and therefore change and alter what I have to consider to be my reality. How much “reality” is out there that I cannot process because I haven’t tuned or optimized the only tools I have to interact with it, to observe it? From here it goes on and on and is probably even less productive, necessary, useful, or fun than the sort of conversation outlined above. Except that for me it is outrageously fascinating, which is why I really try not to bash or look down on those who have the “better than” or “the best” type of conversations because to each his own and to her something else.

I have been working my input processing unit to death lately pondering such thoughts, quite possibly accelerating my descent into incoherent babbling madness. It is also exactly the kind of thing I plan to put into the stories I will be putting up on DarkPurpleUFOs.com, as the aliens attempt to understand our world and then, in turn, how it forces the main human characters to look at their own world in a new way.

I will probably be tossing up articles here that flow in the same polluted tributary, so consider yourself warned.