Musing On iPad TV
Adam Lisagor makes some astute points based on hie recent use of iPad as a TV device:
However, when the iPad came, I found myself watching TV shows more often on it than on my TV. My preferred experience is to obtain TV content on my Mac, use software like the brilliant Air Video to convert it on-the-fly and stream it to my iPad, and watch in bed with my headphones while my girlfriend sleeps or watches her stories. If this isn’t the most thoroughly engaging way to take in video, I don’t know what is. And funny enough, when it’s time for a communal viewing experience, we’ll put it on the good ol’ TV.
What I started to notice about those newly rare occasions when the TV came back on, aside from their quaintness, was how much TV viewing actually promotes passivity in viewership. I feel my body become inert, my eyes, focused on a plane at a middle distance, I feel a tangible blankness to the experience, as though I’m close enough to partake, but far enough not to have to engage. I exit my body and look at myself from the outside, a 30-yard expressionless stare, and it’s a wonder we’ve let this thing dictate such vast portions of our lives for so long. Not to get all heavy.
Contrast that with the physical positioning of a personal video screen like the iPad, where our focus is forced to converge at a plane we’re more accustomed to for active participation, like reading or email or work or cat videos. I’m no scientist, but I’m guessing there are some psychological implications to the distance at which our eyes spend their time focusing as we engage with the world. And to my mind, holding a 10” screen a foot from my face in a dark room is more immersive than staring blankly at a 40” screen twelve feet away.
My point is, different-sized screens will always play roles in our media diets. But we should expect those roles to shift as technology does.
Cognitive scientists have learned that we reason differently when reading on our computer than when reading books (see Lifestreaming At The Edge), apparently engaging more of the ‘executive function’ that involves more crititcal thinking. Perhaps there is a similar effect here, where changing the nature of the experience changes in a basic way how we process it, and the nature of the benefits.
I also like Adam’s conjectures about the direction for Apple TV, and how it might play with iPad. I am still holding off on the iPad until it has a webcam in it, though.
