What's with people and the media thinking stuff is "new" when it's not

[DRBUZZ0]

This is something which I just don't get. Does the media do no research at all? Do they not care that many things which all of a sudden seem like they can change the world are not new at all.

Examples:

Skype: The Chairman of the FCC reportedly said after using it that it would "Change the way we think of telephones." People have talked about how VOIP will change things and how revolutionary it is. Since 1995 you could make calls over the net if you had a 28.8 modem or better! Net2phone has been around forever. I remember making 100% free calls on dialpad.com in 1999. The codecs are a bit better now. The protocols have become better at not getting hung up because of routers. but IM clients have had voice since version 3 of ICQ

Longwave Radio: I saw a news report about the coal miners trapped underground a while ago. They spoke of how a "professor has recently proposed using a new system which uses lower radio frequencies. It's been discovered that these can better penitrate the ground, although it cannot carry voice, it might someday..."

Yeah... "Discovered?" When? Around the first world war? Geeze, that's been used for submarine communications since the U-boat era. And ULF has been used since the 1970's.

Also...Turn water into hydrogen???? NO (^&* SHERLOCK!

I see this all the time. ALL THE TIME. I read something in the "Science times" about how NASA was investigating a non-pressurized formfitting spacesuit. They talked about it in a way which would make it seem like the concept had not existed since the early 1960's.

I keep seeing these things about the new "robot society" they are all over this in japan. They have developed machines which kinda move and look like people. The pneumatics make it a bit jerky and unnatural but it's sorta okay.. They can't walk or anything. People are amazed. The coments on videos on youtube are asstounding. "Wow. Androids are coming soon"

Do they realize they are only 4 decades too late? I made this response to this idiocy:

7cAY3KPejQU

[Gord_in_Toronto]

All people in the entire media have BA degrees, if they have any degree at all. :mad:

[DRBUZZ0]

All people in the entire media have BA degrees, if they have any degree at all. :mad:

And apparently the people who are into the robotic scene too. I really hope none of them ever find out about Epcot or the '64 World's Fair. It might make them feel kinda dumb.

[fuelair]

And apparently the people who are into the robotic scene too. I really hope none of them ever find out about Epcot or the '64 World's Fair. It might make them feel kinda dumb. No problem, they should.

[Naughtyhippo]

The media have a product to sell and they'll sell it any way they can. When not much hapens that media suppliers (hmm, have to say, quite hard to formulate generalities when the output is so varied so apologies if this sounds simplistic)think people would be interested in they need filler news. What better way to disguise this than by pretending it's NEW and AMAZING. So it's not people in the media who are dumb, but those in the audience - and of course, all of this output is targeted at specific audiences. I doubt re-hashing old claims in something like the New Scientist would be believed more than if you had it in a tabloid (or daily comic with spoonfed opinions, as I think of 'em).

[Taffer]

Does the media do no research at all?

I think you got it on your second sentence. ;)

[JoeEllison]

What's interesting is that we'll notice all of this stuff, as trivial as it is. Then, at least half of us will accept without question when the media reports on politics and world events... even though the journalistic standards are pretty much the same: sell papers, and facts be damned.

[becomingagodo]

I keep seeing these things about the new "robot society" they are all over this in japan. They have developed machines which kinda move and look like people. The pneumatics make it a bit jerky and unnatural but it's sorta okay.. They can't walk or anything. People are amazed. The coments on videos on youtube are asstounding. "Wow. Androids are coming soon"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tArJQiVUYaw
They should watch chitty chitty bang bang, it has the first flying car in it too.

Everything possible is wrong with the media. Saying that you can find out about paris hilton.

[fls]

This is part of what I think happens.

Progress tends to be incremental - small steps. Researchers within the field get excited when they hit upon a big step. They want to tell others about it, so the press gets involved. To explain to the press why the discovery is exciting requires explaining the context. Since the reporter hasn't heard of any of this before, they can't tell which part was old and which part was the new discovery. So the whole thing gets presented as a new discovery. Especially since, even if the reporter did understand which part was new, the reporter will not have enough knowledge to understand why the new discovery is so exciting. Do you think any reporter would blink twice at the discovery that "there is no displacement of the interference bands"?*

Linda

*Michelson-Morley experiment

[blutoski]

One of the purposes of CSICOP was to provide a resource for media. In BC, the BCSkeptics attempt to be a first point of contact for media inquiries on subjects of interest.

There are new programs started quite recently to address this gap: Dawkins holds the Simonyi chair, for example, and SUNY has a masters in Science And The Public.

[Iamme]

Sometimes things are brought back into vogue for succeeding generations who did not know of what they had years ago. And back years ago, some of these things never really caught on, so someone got the bright idea to try it again, a generation or two or three or so, later.

[INRM]

Ignorance...


INRM

[DRBUZZ0]

Sometimes things are brought back into vogue for succeeding generations who did not know of what they had years ago. And back years ago, some of these things never really caught on, so someone got the bright idea to try it again, a generation or two or three or so, later.

Reminds me of 3D movies and such. The technology has gone from colored glasses in the 1950's to polarized glasses in the 1970's to synchronized LCD glasses in the late 1990's. Each generation offered some distinct advantages. The polarized glasses enabled full color and the LCD glasses made the images a bit sharper and more defined. But really "evolutionary" and definitely not "revolutionary"

And each time it's just a novelty for a few movies which quickly fade.


Actually a few years ago, there was a USB device which plugged into the computer and contained a cartridge of 256 "primary smells" which when combined could replicate with decent acuracy anything from rotten eggs to strawberries to diesel fuel to purfume. Or at least, so it was said. Reviews indicated that indeed the device could synthesize smells with very good accuracy. (I think the company went out of buisiness but anyways, they're discontinued after selling... not too many...)

The same thing had been tried with everything from scratch-n-sniff cards to aerosols to special ventilation systems in movies and later as companion to television going all the way back t th 1920's.