sailingaway
05-27-2012, 07:49 PM
Ever hear of the Valley of the Zombies?
No, not the cheesy 1946 British horror flick of the same name. I mean a term coined by robotics professor Masahiro Mori in 1970 -- sometimes called "the Uncanny Valley" -- to describe a peculiar phenomenon of human perception.
His theory, which is all the rage among robotics experts and 3-D computer animators, goes like this: We love to anthropomorphize other creatures, right? (Think of all the people who call their dogs or cats their "kids.") And the more these creatures look like us, the cuter they seem. Imagine a graph with resemblance to people on the X axis and cuteness on the Y axis, and the curve will be a straight 45-degree line.
Until they start looking a little bit TOO much like us, that is. Then, all of a sudden, adorable becomes creepy, and the line on the graph takes a precipitous dip.
Think of the Frankenstein monster. Or the undead in "Night of the Living Dead." Or, for that matter, zombies.
They're much more repulsive than, say, the Wolfman, the Blob or the Beast from 50,000 Fathoms. It's that eerie, almost-but-not-quite resemblance that makes your flesh crawl.
And that brings us to Mitt Romney.
more at link
http://www.contracostatimes.com/columns/ci_20282149/snapp-shots-romney-stuck-valley-zombies
It goes all collectivist and creepy at the end, but the beginning is good enough to post...
No, not the cheesy 1946 British horror flick of the same name. I mean a term coined by robotics professor Masahiro Mori in 1970 -- sometimes called "the Uncanny Valley" -- to describe a peculiar phenomenon of human perception.
His theory, which is all the rage among robotics experts and 3-D computer animators, goes like this: We love to anthropomorphize other creatures, right? (Think of all the people who call their dogs or cats their "kids.") And the more these creatures look like us, the cuter they seem. Imagine a graph with resemblance to people on the X axis and cuteness on the Y axis, and the curve will be a straight 45-degree line.
Until they start looking a little bit TOO much like us, that is. Then, all of a sudden, adorable becomes creepy, and the line on the graph takes a precipitous dip.
Think of the Frankenstein monster. Or the undead in "Night of the Living Dead." Or, for that matter, zombies.
They're much more repulsive than, say, the Wolfman, the Blob or the Beast from 50,000 Fathoms. It's that eerie, almost-but-not-quite resemblance that makes your flesh crawl.
And that brings us to Mitt Romney.
more at link
http://www.contracostatimes.com/columns/ci_20282149/snapp-shots-romney-stuck-valley-zombies
It goes all collectivist and creepy at the end, but the beginning is good enough to post...