Generation raised with black and white TV dreams in monochrome
By Nilay Patel 
posted Oct 22nd 2008 8:13AM
posted Oct 22nd 2008 8:13AM
This one's pretty wild -- recent research in the UK finds that people who grew up in the era of black and white media dream in monochrome about a quarter of the time, while those of us raised with color TV almost always dream in full-on Technicolor. The research suggests that exposure to media between the ages of three and 10 is when the switch is set, since that's when the ability to dream kicks in -- which means we're suddenly terrified our kids are going to wind up dreaming in heavily-compressed SD stretched to the wrong aspect ratio, buffering endlessly before failing out due to a missing plugin. Here's to the future.[Via Switched]
Well played Nilay, well played.
Oh Nilay, is there nothing your wit cannot do?
i seriously lol'ed! nice post.
Damn, that means I'll dream in engadget comment system for the rest of my life!
Damn, that means I'll dream in engadget comment system for the rest of my life!
Explains the repeat dreams, huh?
Well here in Australia I would have to torrent my dream from America because the dreams aren't brought here quickly enough :(
Kids from that generation are also very resistant to holding the antenna while the game is on.
Luckily I had a younger sister.
I guess the premise behind the movie The Network was right, people who were raised on TV dream episodes and think on premise of plots.
I wonder how folks raised all along with the internet will be like?
Quick wit internet come backs and pornographic colour images.
The better question is what do the people raised in the silent movie era dream like? Dreams are hard enough to try to figure out without having to read the fuzzy white on black writing.
What I'm looking forward to is dreaming in DVR...
Man, I'd love to be able to pause, rewind and ZOOM in some of my dreams...
Best part? Being able to resume what I missed when the phone rang!
Curses, the amount of time i spent behind a CGA monitor as a kid playing jerky dos games probably means I dream in 4bit colour at 7FPS.
Oh well, better than a thousand shades of grey i guess :(
Wait, why are my dreams typing themselves out in amber monochrome? Gah!
That actually made me laugh.
Kudos to you Nilay.
Please explain the people who have never seen a TV but still dream in B&W?!
The older research showed more towards the level of intelligence.
I think most people dream in both B&W and color, depending on the intensity and or content of the dream. Many if not most dreams aren’t really visual as much as conceptual, and recollections of the dreams are easily influenced by the researcher asking questions.
I’m skeptical…
I saw... A figure... A, figure in a cloak, no... a... figure in a hoodie, wearing dark, black, glasses!
I saw a figure in a black turtle neck... hard to see his face..fuzzy... not in blu-ray quality...
Oh, jeez, it's the let's rock event. False alarm
I’m sceptical also, apart from the power of suggestion there might also be some lies getting in there I fear.
I wonder how many people dream in mono sound now or non-polyphonic, there's your next survey.
Or how about grainy or interlaced?
@who?:
That was Steve Jobs you were dreaming about. And that was an iNightmare.
Right, next generation will dream in 3D. Some research!
i dream with a gun stuck out of my face and everything in "very high" settings.
I had a dream last night I was Duke. As in Duke Nukem 3D. And what I "saw" were Duke Nukem 3D quality graphics. Total WTF when I woke up.
Nice one Nilay!
When will I dream in HD?
When you update you avatar to a picture that's not fuzzy
Hahaha, very funny. I rather enjoyed this one.
Too bad for those who will dream in 2.8" PMP...
Are you sure we don't dream in Colorvision?
That means my little guy is gonna be having HiDef dreams!!! I better not let him watch too many scary films... Might have to stick 100s of Disney stuff on for him between 3 and 10...
I dream often in white on blackwith a hint of primary color and simple lines. Followed by unexpected blocky, flashing caledoscopic nightmares of colors, a series of straight red lines on black and the sentence (c) 1982 Sinclar Research
Damm you, Clive.
So, if I play Dead Space and Resistance 2 in HD... I will dream about them in HD.... There goes my sleep for the rest of my life, oh dear...
As long as they will fix the storylines and chronology and not make people turn up in strange places, I think I don't care that much about video quality.
The "they" part of that is hilarious!
ahahahahahahahah
yes nilay, I wake up from my stretched betamax nightmares thinking exactly this. can I get some tracking?!
Uh-huh! So people who always have those dreams where they suddenly become naked were raised on porn! That's the very scientific conclusion that I choose to draw.
What kind of porn features the viewer, naked?
good writing, SNL material for weekend update
I know what to do. Every day I will be dreaming in black and white and the following day i will be upscaling them all into BluRay quality dreams. wonder what colour bitumen and total darkness will be after upscaling................
Brilliant.
Hi ,
Another feature of the present generation.. so to say is that , our (opps I included myself and generalised it...) imagination of the past always seems to be in black and white. Whenever I think of my grandparentsw in their younger days, it always seems to be in black and white!!
Has nothing to do with you only knowing it from b&w pictures, nothing at all.
Maybe our brain is like one complicated PVR. Doomed to replay the recordings of our childhood TV shows in our sleep over and over and over and o....
Maybe the dreams of the upcoming Apple-MacBookPro-generation won't include any "B's"... That damn sure is gonna be tough!
So does that mean if you grew up with 60Hz refresh rates that you would get frequent seizures while dreaming?
Hahaha, So, true! Great post! 8^)
Sorry sir, you can only return your dream if at least 8 pixels are broken...
Pure genius Mr Patel, pure epic genius!
I never felt compelled to comment before but the wrong aspect ratio/SD content remark was hillarious...