T H E NE W R EA LI T Y H AN G G A O
THE NEW REALITY HANG GAO
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” John M. Culkin, A schoolman’s guide to Marshall McLuhan
“People love to take pictures with iPhone. In fact, it’s the most popular camera in the world. But what people love even more are the memories that are preserved within those images.” Apple, iPhone 6s
“Because when you change the way you see the world you can change the world you see.” Microsoft, HoloLens
“Family fun together — what a time for pictrures. All the year brings wonderful experiences that make you wish, ‘If I only had my camera!’ The one way to avoid regrets is to have your camera, and some Kodak Film, always ready for the picture chances sure to come. ” Kodak advertisment, 1940s-1950s
“Huamankind lingers unregenerately in Plato’s cave, still reveling, its age-old habit, in mere images of the truth.” Susan Sontag, In Plato’s Cave
In the Ice Age, the primitive people made pictures of their prey on the walls of caves and stones, believing that in this way those animals would be in their control. Then people began drawing on canvas or paper. After the mechanical reproduction method, photography, came out, almost everything has been photographed. Landscapes, famliy and the beloved ones appeared on the ilm neagtives. And they are inally on photo papers in family albums. “How is your trip to London?” ”Good, here are some photos.” Now it comes to digital age. Photos would be showed on screen. People take photographs using their smartphone, add some adjustments, and then upload onto Instagram or Facebook. Applications like Google Photo could backup your photos and make collections of your trip, automatically. Maybe the future would be like the story in the third episode of the irst series of Black Mirror. Its name is The Entire History of You. There would be techniques that can access to the memory and record everything people do, see and hear. People can review memory by projecting them onto a screen. And you can even zoom in to see the details. Hang Gao