lost in translation
A colleague pointed me to the Gigalpxl project. It is fascinating stuff, especially as I've turned into a photo nut recently. What is interesting to me is that the camera uses film. No CCDs...not digital...film. The resulting photo undergoes hi-rez scanning to turn it digital for manipulation.
I have rambled on for years (to whomever would listen) about the fundamental disconnect that is taking place around us. We live in an analog world. Wave/particle duality aside, we are not zeros and ones. Nature is not zeros and ones. We and the world are continuous beings.
Digital on the other hand, is on or off. Zero or one. Black or white. Many of our interactions are now mediated through digital technology. That means that we and our world are converted from analog to digital, then back again. And my theory is that no matter how good the technology gets, no matter how many gigapixels we have in the camera, no matter how high the sampling rate for audio, there will remain a fundamental disconnect in the two worlds. It is more philosophical than technical. Continuous does not equal stepped. Just as quantum mechanics altered our view of "reality", so does this gap between our "real" world, and the digital representation.
This is exacerbated by the fact that "digital worlds" (or synthetic worlds, depending on your terminology) are in place and growing exponentially. In these places, there are no analog beings...only digital. But of course at this point they are only given meaning when an analog being (us) interacts with the digital avatars. Or is it?
One of my theories is that we are in a transitional period. At this point we have this disconnect. And synthetic worlds still require humans to give them meaning. But at some point, the computers will generate their own meaning. The viruses will not need human interaction to propogate. The economies will not need people to drive them. We are somewhat there on limited fronts, but hurtling there on the rest.
Obviously I'm still hashing through all of this. But for some reason, I feel that I want to go buy a 35mm film camera. Because even though digital is fast, cheap, easy, I'm missing something. Something important. The essence.