
How the digital camera transformed our concept of history - Guereric
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/how-the-digital-camera-transformed-our-concept-of-history
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crazygringo
I actually find it interesting to think, in 50 years, how the average person
will view "history" visually.

Because for me, history was always linked to visual artifacts -- styles of
painting, black and white, jerky films, then styles of film grain and
saturation, and so on.

The kind of vivid, "real"-looking photography that comes with cell phones is a
very recent thing that it's still all "recent memory" rather than "history".

How would I view events like WWI, or the Civil War, if we could watch them in
1080p? Would they feel "closer"? Will it have the effect of collapsing time?
Would we "learn more" from history because we can identify more?

Or will the ubiquity of content make it irrelevant? Will it seem less like
history and just more of an extended present that we bother to learn even
_less_ from because it just seems the same?

(Sure you could argue that we'll have 360° 30K video with megagamut, and that
current photo/video will seem equally quaint, but I don't think that's true.
Footage today seems qualitatively real in way that black and white from the
1940's wasn't. I believe there's a threshold of quality we passed that
probably started first with digital camcorders, and finished with the advent
of 1080p videocameras in cell phones.)

~~~
benjohnson
There's an old photo taken in 1894 of a Native American girl smiling - her
modern seeming expression makes the photo seem like it was taken yesterday.

It really changes my impression of what the late 1800's were like - it makes
me think that they were more like me and less like a stodgy caricature.

[https://mymodernmet.com/smiling-19th-century-
photograph/](https://mymodernmet.com/smiling-19th-century-photograph/)

I suspect that modern video will humanize us to posterity.

~~~
roelschroeven
I get the same feeling from that photograph. Amazing how something simple as a
smile brings a picture so much closer to us. It feels much more human, I
suppose, than the stiff emotionless photos that were common at the time.

