Cameras are amazing. I mean, perhaps I’m just easily amazed, but I was amazed before they went digital. Think about it. You click a little box and an image of what you are looking at is transferred to film. You develop it, and voilà! You have a picture. Then came the digital age. Even more amazing, right? Click and upload and share with the world, instantaneously. But cameras require a lens, and the type of lens determines what you see within the frame. If you use a telephoto lens, you can pull a far away image closer. If you use a macro lens you can see the finest detail on a flower. With a standard lens, you view may be somewhat limited in scope. With a wide angle lens, you pull more into view, and hence your picture.
But here’s the thing: If you spend your life looking through a narrow lens, you’re missing the world around you. I had a conversation, via text (of course, in this digital age), with someone who suggested that something which happened, might not have really happened, because there were no cell phone videos or images of the event as it was happening. For the record, the event was a mass-shooting. And, for the record, I think if someone is firing a semi-automatic weapon at you, you might not choose to stop, drop, and take a video. You might be running for your life. But when I heard this argument, after dealing with my disbelief that anyone could possibly believe anything as horrific as a mass shooting could be a hoax, it made me stop and think. If you’ve grown up with a cell phone in your hand, and if you’ve used that cell phone to document every step of your life – Look what I’m having for breakfast! Selfie! Look where we went today! Selfie! Look at the new jeans I bought! Selfie! Look what I’m having for lunch! Selfie! Look where I am now! Selfie! (You get my drift.) – then any event, good, bad, or indifferent, not documented by cell phone pictures or videos, can’t possibly be a real event. At least not to your cell phone-oriented mind. This is weird to me, because it actually does make some kind of sense, in a very sad and distorted sort of way. I didn’t grow up with a cell phone. I didn’t have a cell phone until I was well into adulthood, and the first one I had not only came in a suitcase, but you could barely hear the person on the other end through all the static. But it was portable and, at the time, we all found that to be amazing and exciting. So I’ve spent the majority of my time here on Earth relying on my eyes and ears and other senses to document my life and events occurring around me. Honestly? Most of the time I can’t even get my phone out of my pocket and turned on it time to capture some amazing moment.
I think, in this case, there is an argument to be made for the failure of technology to enhance our lives. If you are intent on documenting your life with your cell phone, you’re not spending your time living your life. That narrow focus is keeping things hidden from you. You need the wide-angle lens, the lens you were born with. You need your peripheral vision. You need critical thinking, without cell phone verification. That’s living and learning. You need to turn it off, put it away, and look around you. There’s a whole world out there, filled with events better seen with the wide-angle lens then they ever would be with a narrow, limited, cell phone camera. Sometimes reality is more frightening, but often it can be more beautiful as well. Changing the lens, changes the view. And, perhaps, the viewpoint.
~ jwb ~