Inelegant Documentary
Last night I watched two thirds of the PBS documentary The Elegant Universe on DVD. It’s based on the best-selling book by Brian Greene, a specialist in quantum field theory, and deals with ‘Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory’. I’ve been meaning to read the book for some time (before or after The Tao of Physics, Hyperspace, and The Dancing Wu Li Masters, I don’t know) and was looking forward to seeing computer graphic visualizations of the various concepts. Now, I can actually comprehend how there might be dimensions other than the four we perceive, and what a ’string’ actually is. I was a bit disappointed, though, by the tongue-in-cheek, Nickelodeon-meets-Cosmos feel of the production. To me, it seemed way too popularized and just plain inelegant. After reading reviews on Amazon, I found it does match Greene’s down-to-Earth approach to the material, but I’m also not the only one that found it a bit goofy at times. That said, what’s with leaving-in all the commercials and intros at the beginning of each episode? I understand that’s necessary when airing them on television, but why on a DVD collection? Still, the content was very informative, the visuals were interesting, and hearing from the original discoverers and theorists helped my understanding a lot.
Last night I watched two thirds of the PBS documentary The Elegant Universe on DVD. It’s based on the best-selling book by Brian Greene, a specialist in quantum field theory, and deals with ‘Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory’. I’ve been meaning to read the book for some time (before or after The Tao of Physics, Hyperspace, and The Dancing Wu Li Masters, I don’t know) and was looking forward to seeing computer graphic visualizations of the various concepts. Now, I can actually comprehend how there might be dimensions other than the four we perceive, and what a ’string’ actually is. I was a bit disappointed, though, by the tongue-in-cheek, Nickelodeon-meets-Cosmos feel of the production. To me, it seemed way too popularized and just plain inelegant. After reading reviews on Amazon, I found it does match Greene’s down-to-Earth approach to the material, but I’m also not the only one that found it a bit goofy at times. That said, what’s with leaving-in all the commercials and intros at the beginning of each episode? I understand that’s necessary when airing them on television, but why on a DVD collection? Still, the content was very informative, the visuals were interesting, and hearing from the original discoverers and theorists helped my understanding a lot.