Programming Pauls of Wisdom

Does technology affect what we can imagine?

Einstein was born after photography.
Light is captured and frozen by photography, and can if need be altered, bent, changed from its reality into whatever the photographer can create, haloes, fairies in the garden and ufos in the sky.

But it is in cinema that we see light lying to us most effectively, and it was when D W Gritths was inventing the basic lies of cinema that Einstein was seeing the truths of the universe. But without DW could Einstein have seen so deep into the universe? If the cinema he loved so much did not exist, could Einstein (who claimed he imagined the problems first then worked out the maths) have had the mental tools to conjure his ideas?

Without birds would we dream of planes? Without spaceships landing on moons (Le Voyage Dans La lune 1902) , without images in front of our eyes, would we be able to imagine ourselves racing on light beams or falling in elevators?

Well, yes.

But our mental tools are surely affected by the technology in front of us, and a world filled by cart wheels will form our minds differently to a world where our houses are intelligent enough to know we have entered the room and want the curtains drawn and lights on. How will our children learn about a world that seems to be so attentive to their needs, and perhaps, just perhaps, if Einstein had never gone to the cinema he may never have dreamed of flying on a light beam.

Hollywood has a lot to answer for.

posted by paul @ 4:55 PM