We got my daughter a digital camera for Christmas. She loves it. It’s not the greatest piece of tech, but it will store 1,000 jpegs that are 640×480 pixels. And they upload to the computer.
We gave it to her the day before Christmas, so she could capture the action on Christmas Day. She has an admirable eye for making mundane subjects less intolerable.
We noticed something else. Now that she had the power to record each slice of history, she felt the overwhelming need to do so. (Hey, it’s not just her. Nor is it five-year-olds. We all like to play with our new toys.)
She took pictures of everything she could. I was amazed the batteries held out as long as they have. Snapping photos of the tiny build-it-bears she had gotten from Santa.
She even took pictures out the window. She doesn’t know anything about focal length, 
lens optics, aperture, lighting, or anything other than point and shoot. I couldn’t very well explain to her that all she’d get was a blur as we drove down the highway.
Long views are more focused
How much of our time and energy is being spent capturing and measuring and documenting things that really don’t matter? I know many people who followed each twist and turn of the Primary coverage the night of January 8th. (Those of you in New Hampshire are excused.) Pundits and Prophets came down from Mt. Sinai with new tablets every ten minutes, proclaiming to the world that the balance of power in American politics was shifting under our very feet. Political Tectonics.
What disturbs me is how jittery we’ve all become about such tiny movements. We’re trying to steer the car from the backseat, and instead of eyes focused forward we’re divining the future in patterns of bent grass at 70 miles per hour.
The speed of thought
It’s not just politics, although the propensity for instant punditry is much greater. It’s the way news is advanced from one cycle to the next. It’s the way tech reporters and consumers are reacting and responding to every silicon nugget. It’s become our reflex to shoot first, and ask later whether the camera settings were any good. After all, if you can burst 30 frames a second, you’ll get at least one good one, right?
Our brains can process enormous amounts of information at one time, but it’s distributed networking, not raw speed. It’s the connections and patterns that make us smarter, that make us who we are. The electrical impulses jump the synapses in a blistering 1/5000th of a second… but because the neuron must “recharge,” the signals in your nervous system can slow to a range of 20 inches per second up to 100 yards per second. (Computers are easily a million times faster.)
Yet we can soak in the big picture. Focus further away, let the picture fix, and the details will resolve. Look further, and things become clearer.
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, politics, technology, sociology, news[/tags]
Hey, it’s not a Canon, but photography is always about the shooter and not the gear.
First, don’t you just love how kids are so energetic about their toys? My daughter also received a digital camera and goes around saying “cheese” and ending up with great pictures of her nose.
Second, I accomplished what you wrote about today! I had a voicemail that had nothing to do with me but since I dislike leaving people in the lurch, I was stressing about how to help this person. Then, I stepped back and thought, “Hey – my admin can call this person back and tell them who to contact”. By looking at the bigger picture, I realized that I have resources I don’t always utilize. Wa-la! A solution that makes everyone happy. And with other more extreme projects, a big picture view can help keep them on course versus becoming so engrossed with one particular set of details that you miss out on making the entire campaign successful.
It’s good to be reminded — and in fact reminds me of Milan Kundera’s “Book of Laughter and Forgetting,” in which he points out that history *used* to happen slowly — in that it took time to be recorded, reported, dispersed, analyzed. Now, it’s out in a flash — and replaced the next day with the next news, which is instantly forgotten as well.
No wonder it seems there’s no room in our brains to take the long view.
Your post is a good reminder that there IS room, if we just remember to take it…
Thanks Merredith –
I’m also reminded of one of my favorite re-reads, “Faster: the Acceleration of Just About Everything” by James Glieck. I’ve recommended it to so many people over the years, yet it did not consciously come to my mind once while writing this.
Susan – I’m thrilled with my daughter’s interest. She used to sneak pictures with our recently replaced digital camera, and getting one just for her is cheaper than insurance!
yeah, but we need examples of how / why the big pic is inpt (it is). article would be better with two examples of actually a) seeing a larger pattern, and b) why, in those two specific instances, it helped.
THEN say, generalization, we should all do this all the time, etc.
PS, I need to get a new digital camera and figure out how to plug it into my new PC . . I am buying one tomorrow if that turns out NOT to be the present that Brittnie gets me. . . so you and your daughter can give me advice.