Prison dramas are notoriously difficult to render on screen with any authentic sense of the tedium that underscores the violence, claustrophobia and degradation of daily life.

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The limited number of polygons means that speeding up one of these systems to refresh the screen 60 times a second, as is needed to smoothly render fast-action scenes, requires cutting the number of polygons per screen to the point where detail suffers.

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Then again, it could well be that the new technologies render us more autistic: less inclined and able to communicate, and therefore happier in front of a screen rather than talking to, let alone loving, our fellow man.

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