On phorgeting your child’s phone number

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We have spoken often in this blog about the machine-to-human and human-to-machine aspects of the modern world as we approach the singularity. To me it is a matter of dealing with the inevitable. You’re not going to stop or reverse the trend. It is much like time and the tides, in that they wait for no man. And really, the issue seems to be not so much a resistance to change but a resistance to the speed of change, which prevents us from taking the usual time to process what is going on. Of course, that’s the whole point. Isn’t it?
This morning I read a fascinating piece by Sean Coughlin, Education Correspondnent on the BBC News entitled “Digital dependence ‘eroding human memory’” Now there’s a subject close to my heart and favorite theme.
According to a new study by Dr. Maria Wimber from the University of Birmingham  the trend of looking up information “prevents the build-up of long-term memories”. The study, examined the memory habits of 6,000 adults in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Not surprisingly, they found more than a third turn first to computers to recall information.

The big issue, of course, is what the long-term implications of such reliance are. And the problem that they identify is that push-button information can often be immediately forgotten. “Our brain appears to strengthen a memory each time we recall it, and at the same time forget irrelevant memories that are distracting us,” according to Dr Wimber.

A very marked observation is that among adults surveyed in the UK, 45% could recall their home phone number from the age of 10, while only 29% could remember their own children’s phone numbers and only 43% could remember their work number. This phenomenon has been dubbed “digital amnesia.” To modernize one of those Facebook postings people are so fond of, everyone has a photographic memory, some just don’t have RAM.

It has been argued that humans have evolved a new form of evolution, memetic evolution, where units of memory are created and passed on collectively. So the issue becomes whether the development by humans of digital memory – an extracorporeal form of memory is just a next logical step in this process of this super-evolution or whether we have mentally misstepped and lost our way. Losing your way in terms of evolution usually has catastrophic consequences. It has always struck me that there is a profound ignorance in the belief that we have somehow escaped the inevitable cycles of biological evolution.

Global warming is an example of this self-deception. Parts of the world are becoming precariously hot – precarious that is to support human life. Even a century’s view is myopic on a geological scale. If we predict doom and are a hundred years off in our predictions, the species is just as doomed, and along with it any arrogant view of having superseded biological evolution.

The magic on the pond

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Figure 1 - The first color of fall 2015, Litlle Fresh Pond, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – The first color of fall 2015, Litlle Fresh Pond, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Well, it is time for nature to work its magic in New England. I went out for a walk along Fresh Pond today, to catch the early fall color. The key to autumn is the reds. The yellows and the recalcitrant greens are beautiful, but it is always as if they would be nothing without the brilliant reds. The first act in this chromatic parade is, believe it or not, the poison ivy, and that abounds with its brilliant crimson shades. But today I was attracted to this little tree along the shore of Little Fresh Pond. I intentionally captured just out-of-focus the surrounding reeds and the deeply out-of-focus pond itself in the background. And like I said, this is just the beginning.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 84 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/2000 th sec at f/7.1, with -1 exposure compensation.

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

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Well, there is no denying the fact that in New England summer has given way to fall. We have knocked on the door of October and entered. Here we are excited. This is our most beautiful month. The leaves are just beginning to show their color in a last dramatic performance before giving way to winter. It is time at Hati and Skoll to post our Halloween Gallery. I’ve put it here. But all month long you can also find it among the galleries. These are photographs of Halloween soft sculptures ready for hoards of trick or treaters,

As the Second Witch says in Macbeth:

“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes. [Knocking]
Open locks,
Whoever knocks!”

The lady, or the tiger?

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Door in the shadows, Natick, Massachusetts, IPhone photograph. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Door in the shadows, the lady or the tiger?  Natick, Massachusetts, IPhone photograph. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Last Sunday I posted about the unusual sunlight during my morning walk at the mall. I wanted to share Figure 1 another IPhone photograph that I took that morning. This shows slanting shafts of sunlight and a hidden doorway buried in the shadows. It is kind of a tribute to the IPhone that it was able to pull off the necessary dynamic range for this photograph without my having to activate HDR. The door is just barely visible, but the lines of shadow draw our eyes first to it and then away from it.

Doors are intrinsically mysterious. They relate both to the famous logic problem of which door leads to freedom and the Edward R. Stockton’s famous short story “The Lady, or the Tiger?”

The story takes place in a land ruled by a king who practices “trial by ordeal,” where guilt or innocence is determined by giving the accused the choice of two doors, Behind one is a tiger. Opening that door, well, does not have a very positive outcome. Behind the other door is a lady whom the king has chosen for the accused. The king learns that his daughter has a lover and he is brought to trial by ordeal. The clever point is that the king has solved his problem either way. One door leads to the man’s death the other to marriage with someone other than the princess. The princess learns which door is which. When the man is brought to the arena, he looks to the princess for a hint as to which door to choose. She gives him a discreet signal.

Now herein lies the problem. Will she send him to his death or to the arms of a rival. Stockton in a famous tease doesn’t give us the answer. But instead leaves his reader with the words:

“And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door – the lady, or the tiger?”

Man the barricades 1848

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Figure 1 - Daguerreotype showing the barricades during the June (1848) in Paris. Original in Musee d'Orsay. In the public domain in the United States because of its age.

Figure 1 – Daguerreotype showing the barricades in the Rue Saint Maur-Popincourt during the June Days Uprising (1848) in Paris. Original in Musee d’Orsay. In the public domain in the United States because of its age.

Following up on yesterday’s post about the first photograph of the sun taken by renowned French physicists Louis Fizeau and Leon Foucault in 1845, I thought that it would be fun to continue the Parisian theme and consider the daguerreotype Figure 1.  It is a  very unusual daguerreotype in that it is not a portrait but a scene and, it is quite possibly the earliest that illustrates an historic event.  The photograph shows the Barricade in the Rue Saint Maur-Popincourt on June 26, 1848 during ill-fated the June Days Uprising.   Since some readers are sure to ask, the June Days Uprising or 1848 should not be confused with the June Rebellion of 1832, also ill-fated, and the theme of Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.”

.”The uprising was staged by French workers from 23 June to 26 June 1848, in response to plans to close the National Workshops, created by the Second Republic in order to provide work and a source of income for the unemployed. The National Guard, under General Louis Eugène Cavaignac, was called out to quell the protests. Over 10,000 people were either killed or injured, and four thousand insurgents were ultimately deported to Algeria. The photograph was published in the Journées illustrées de la révolution de 1848 and is now in the Musée d’Orsay.

If we consider this image in our recurrent theme of captured and frozen moments of the past, moments that connect us across centuries, then it is significant to note that what this image really conveys is passion, political passion. In that regard this now fuzzy, clouded over image is truly remarkable. It speaks profoundly to the inner meaning of photographic and literary record.

“So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.”

Victor Hugo

from the Preface of Les Misérables

1862

 

 

Photographic first #18 – First photograph of the sun

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Figure v1 - First photograph of the sun taken April 2, 1845. In the public domain in the United States because of its age.

Figure v1 – First photograph of the sun taken April 2, 1845. In the public domain in the United States because of its age.

My discussion about Mars yesterday got me looking for the first photograph ever taken of Mars, meaning from an Earth-based telescope, and so far I have been unable to find it. I did however, find the first photograph extant of someone “flipping the bird.” I also found the first photograph ever taken of the sun, shown in Figure 1. In the Geek Zone this daguerreotype is likely to bring shivers because of who took the photograph. It was taken on Apron 2 1845 by legendary, French physicists Louis Fizeau and Leon Foucault made the first successful photographs of the sun on April 2, 1845. The original image, taken with an exposure of 1/60th of a second, was about 4.7 inches (12 centimeters) in diameter. Not only does it capture several sunspots but you can see their structure and also the rice-like texture of the solar surface, when seen through a moderate sized telescope.

Water on Mars

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Figure 1 - water streaks on Mars, from NASA and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – water streaks on Mars, from NASA and in the public domain.

The big news yesterday was NASA’s announcement of water on Mars. I would have preferred an ancient Martian trilobite fossil, but hey, this is pretty exciting for us science geeks. What struck me most when I looked over the press coverage of this event this morning was the characteristic American exuberant hyperbole contrasted with the English understatement.  NBC news had the headline “H2 Whoa! Mars shows strong signs of flowing water,” while the BBC was more staid with “Mars satellite hints at liquid water.” I mean think of it in biblical terms. It’s  “MANKIND EXPELLED!” vs. “Adam and Eve change address.”

Anyway I’ve spent some time thinking which photograph released yesterday I believe will define this historic moment of discovery and I am going to have to go with Figure 1 which shows dark narrow streaks, called “recurring slope lineae,” believed to be rivulets, emanating from the walls of Garni Crater on Mars. The images is a constructed views from observations by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The sewing machine

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Figure 1 - The tailor's shop, Natick, Massachusetts. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – The tailor’s shop, Natick, Massachusetts. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

It is usually the case that lighting in “the mall” is defined by the artificial. Figure 1 is an exception. I was at the Natick Collection in Natick, Massachusetts early Sunday morning, before most of the stores open. And when I past the Tailor’s Shop I saw that the display in the window was flooded with a warm beam of light coming in through one of the skylights.  It show and antique sewing machine and sewing table. These always remind me of my grandfather, who like so many of the immigrants of his day was himself a tailor. I smile also at the tailor Motel Kamzoi in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.” I saw that play with my parents and grandmother in its first Broadway run many years ago. My grandfather had a foot treadle machine in his apartment, which I marveled at with the curiosity of my childhood.

The Singer sewing machine was the manufacturer of my grandfather’s day, and far into the twentieth century these icons of the past were ubiquitous. Isaac Merritt Singer was did not invent the sewing machine but he designed the first practical model, which he patented on August 12, 1851, and he embraced and adopted the mass manufacturing techniques pioneered by Henry Ford in the auto industry and perhaps more significantly he made it available under a hire-purchase plan enabling consumers to buy on credit in “easy installments.”

This image was taken with my IPhone 6 and I think really competes with what I could have achieved with my Canon DSLR. And it is unusual for me, in that I did it without toning despite its antique allusions.

“A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. You may ask ‘Why do we stay up there if it’s so dangerous?’ Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition! “

Milkweed

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Figure 1 - The common milkweed along Little Fresh Pond, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – The common milkweed along Little Fresh Pond, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

In Massachusetts, we are well into the transition from late summer to early autumn. We have had glorious dry sunshine, cool nights, and medicinally warm days.  The colors are slowly changing, and you have only to look closely and see the subtle shades of color that define this season. Indeed, fall is fractal in nature. The range of color occurs on all levels. You have only to look.

I have been intrigued and watching the milkweed pods along the shore of Little Fresh Pond, in Cambridge. They have just started to pop.  They conjure up memories of the late summers of my childhood – strange alien plants. Yes, this sensation of the alien was driven by the scifi movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,1956, ” which in turn was driven by the mid-century communist scare. Wandering around the grassy areas of the Catskills you would find them – compact pods that would explode into little cotton balls of seed.

Milkweeds once were prolific in the American Midwest, but they were decimated by herbicides.  This in turn threatened the population of monarch butterflies whose larvae feed exclusively on them. Now in places like the Fresh Pond Reservation where there are projects to restore and save the monarchs, part of that is the repopulating of the milkweeds. The specimen of Figure 1 are in a little fenced in area by the dog beach on Little Fresh Pond. I like the color and the chiaroscuro lighting but am a bit disappointed by the sharpness. My camera is always set for birds and as a result the f-number was set at 4.5, which gives a rather shallow depth of focus.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 75 mm Aperture Priority AE Mode, ISO 1600, 1/4000th sec. at f/4.5 with no exposure compensation.