Most people listening to music and watching videos on their cell phones are committing unnatural acts!
It’s not what they are watching or hearing. It’s how they are doing it
Tens of thousands of years of evolution have given us two eyes side by side, not one above the other. That’s why we see the world in panorama.
Evolution also gave us two ears on opposite sides of our heads, allowing us to hear space—to locate sounds around us, not just above or below.
Yet you would never know this from the way most media is viewed today.
People swipe through tiny vertical images while listening through a single flattened audio channel.
So I have been experimenting with panoramic video and binaural audio—using modern technology to reconnect with the way we naturally see and hear.
And why I use these GIFs as a gentle reminder to act natural.
Here are a few early experiments.
The clip below is from a documentary still in progress. It was shot with an anamorphic lens and recorded in binaural sound.
Watch and listen with earphones if possible. The background sounds help convey the presence of a real space—it was not recorded in a studio.
This is just one shot, unedited, from a documentary in progress.
I think this matters.
Not just for music, but for human communication itself. Technology has gradually squeezed out many of the subtle channels through which we understand each other.
Just as we evolved two thumbs, two eyes, and two ears, we also evolved neural systems that interpret extremely subtle signals—spatial cues, micro-timing, unconscious social behavior.
Panoramic images and binaural sound restore some of those missing signals. Although they are high-tech, they are more natural.
The following is a selection of resources. It’s under construction, so enter at your own risk!
Can We Save Kids from Social Media?
Jon Haidt: “https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3230378_Media_Richness_or_Media_Naturalness_The_Evolution_of_Our_Biological_Communication_Apparatus_and_Its_Influence_on_Our_Behavior_Toward_E-Communication_Tools
“I would summarize it by saying that democracy is a conversation, and when that conversation was in the Agora, in Greece, they had one kind of democracy. And when that conversation was during the Gutenberg era, which took place in print and in places like The New Yorker, and CBS News, it was a different kind of conversation. And now we’re out of the Gutenberg era—we’re into the network era. We will never again know what’s true. It’ll never be possible to have a shared reality.”
The goal is to have a “shared reality”. That is what the documentary can give us. Restore the shared reality. Pocket Docs.
Ned Kock’s 2005 paper introduces Media Naturalness Theory, arguing that face-to-face communication is the biological baseline for human interaction rather than just the “richest” medium. The theory suggests that electronic communication creates an evolutionary mismatch, leading to increased cognitive effort and reduced physiological arousal. Read the full paper at ResearchGate.
Kock, N. (2005). Media Richness or Media Naturalness The …
Apr 21, 2022 — Kock, N. ( 2005). Media Richness or Media Naturalness The Evolution of our Biological Communication Apparatus and Its Influence on…
ABSTRACT
Our Biological Communication Apparatus and Its Influence on Our Behavior Toward E-Communication Tools —NED KOCK
E-communication in businesses has been the target of intense research. The media richness hypothesis has been influential in some e-communication research circles and has also been strongly attacked by social theorists. It is argued in this paper that this theoretical polarization involving advocates of the media richness hypothesis and social theorists is due to two problems. The first is that there is a wealth ofempirical evidence that provides direct support for the notion that human beings prefer the face-to-face medium for a variety of business tasks that involve communication, which seems to provide support for the mediarichness hypothesis. The second problem is that the media richness hypothesis is built on a vacuum, as no underlying explanation was ever presented by media richness theorists for our predisposition toward rich (or face-to-face) media. The main goal of this paper is to offer a solution to these problems by providing an alternative to the media richness hypothesis, referred to here as media naturalness hypothesis, developed based on Darwin’s theory of evolution. The media naturalness hypothesis argues that, other things being equal, a decrease in the degree of naturalness of a communication medium (or its degree of similarity to the face-to-face medium) leads to the following effects in connection with a communication interaction: (1) increased cognitive effort, (2) increased communication ambiguity, and (3) decreased physiological arousal. Like the media richness hypothesis, the media naturalness hypothesis has important implications for the selection, use, and deployment of e-communication tools in organizations. However, unlike the media richness hypothesis, the media naturalness hypothesis is compatible with social theories of behavior toward e-communication tools.
Among other things, this paper shows that the media naturalness hypothesis (unlike its media richness counterpart) is compatible with the notion that, regardless of the obstacles posed by low naturalness media, individuals using those media to perform collaborative tasks may achieve the same or better task-related outcomes than individuals using media with higher degrees of naturalness.