"There are still other times, however, when our sensory impressions are severly diminished, as for example when we enter virtually any contemporary institutional building, office complex or apartment high rise. Then we encounter the phenomenon known as sensory deprivation. In sensory deprivation, we are told, the victim experiences not lessened but increased imagery...The increased internal imagery is the result of the perceptual apparatus trying to keep going in spite of reduced or almost totally absent external stimulation...Everyone knows that, far from being sensorily deprived, the average city dweller is fairly overwhelmed by a shattering and inescapeable barrage of sense impressions....and we defend ourselves by screening out that which we cannot or do not wish to assimilate. But there is more to it than that. I believe that this urban sensory assault and battery, if we feel we must describe it as overload, is a simple quantitive overload, having no variety whatever. The tumult and the sensory hammering all come from one single source; without exception they are of human manufacture. All our sensory bruises are self inflicted...Monotony is a prime contributor to the symptoms of sensory deprivation." -John A. Livingston, The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, 1981, page 92.
"Domesticated animals such as chickens or cattle have greatly diminished sensory capabilities compared to their wild counterparts. In the domesticated animal, scent, hearing, vision and tactility are in varying degrees crippled. From the onset of its life the animal is poor at processing even the meager sensory information available in its simple, monotonous environment. Similarly, children today are growing up with less potential to develop sensory acuity because of the monotony of their environments. Watching television, playing with computers, and spending extended amounts of time indoors all contribute to a lack of sensorimotor stimulation. As with domesticated animals, children do not experience the full potential of their physical selves...Learning through direct physical experience cannot be reproduced on a computer screen." -Alison Armstrong and Charles Casement, The Child and the Machine: How computers put our children's education at risk, 2000, page 52.
