I’ve become increasingly aware of a phenomenon. People around me interact with the world indirectly. They are no longer watching the world, but are watching the world through tiny glass screens. Some corporations have already found new ways to capitalize on the phenomenon. Google Glass was born out of the idea that we experience life through our cellphones. We spend hours tethered to palm-sized chinese made cases of glass and circuitry that represent windows into highly personalized social spaces and windows out of the everyday world.
My awareness of this phenomenon clicked into focus this evening when I found myself asking a friend to text some pics from the xmas block party she was going to. I immediately recalled the xmas block party I went to on Black Friday and how important it was to me to capture the moment in picture. Instead of watching my boys climb on Santa’s lap, I photographed the event, insuring they would be able to see themselves years from now and further insuring that I missed the reality of the moment myself.
Taking pictures of something isn’t the same as experiencing it; in fact it dims the moment like plugging too many items in a socket. The moment is preserved in photo yet lost entirely. Perhaps if we put down the phones and camera’s we could stay in the moment itself a bit longer and create moments that will last in our hearts.