Abuliac

On digital money and photography...

We are moving closer and closer to an immaterial, abstract world with nothing physical to show for our memories, experiences, or even hard work.

Example 1: Money
In the beginning, we (as a race) bartered with actual products, e.g. chickens, chopped wood, milk. When we needed rice, we would exchange something else for it or provide a service. Then came a more generalized form of payment that could be traded for anything (It was too hard to find exactly what someone else wanted, so we needed something standard).

So came the exchange for gold. Gold was precious and had (and has) meaning in most cultures. Then the gold became to heavy to lug around. We created slips of paper that promised the gold being delivered at a later time... which later turned into just paper that stood for the gold (which "money" was for a long time).

Now... the paper money is just that: paper money. It has a vague sense of standing for some value, which changes over time (inflation) so there isn't even a standing worth to it. Not only that, but we have these abstract notions of banking and credit cards, where money disappears (no longer tangible) but you still "have" it and can "use" it. I won't even go into the whole idea of investing in stocks to multiply these imaginary, abstract dollars.

The point is that millionaires will probably never in their lives SEE the money they "own". It will be "wrapped up" in the market, or "held" by some bank (which really loans it out to other people and pays them interest in return). The only people now who pay cash for houses are probably criminals (who may also be the only ones to store their paper money in their homes).

We function as a society on this abstract concept of money, rarely actually seeing it anymore. Credit cards (and even the new PayPass) are taking over the need to carry around any physical representation of wealth.

Example 2: Photography
As technology becomes more advanced, we get further and further away from the art of capturing and recording light as it fell on a certain place at a certain time. Instead, we have become obsessed with "capturing memories" for the sake of being able to see ourselves, perhaps, as others see us. We take pictures to be able to say, "I did that. I was there. I was alive at that moment."

With digital photography, we don't even get physical proof in our hands of our memories; we get images upon a screen -- pixels of light. We cycle through the photos -- laughing, smiling, or cringing -- and perhaps share them electronically with some friends, who may also laugh, smile, or cringe. We now choose what to print, or whether to print the photos, if in the past, everything you "shot" became material, now we choose to throw away memories that we don't like, or ones in which we didn't look as young, or thing, or attractive enough as we'd like to have looked.

On the other hand, the general practice of sharing online photo albums with everyone has created the new problem of not knowing who or when or why will look through your photographs. Recently browsing through scandalous photos of fellow coeds, I wondered how many of these Ivy-leaguers will go on to have political or legislative careers, where some of these photos could easily be used as blackmail. And now, there is no restriction as to who can see these digital pictures, reproducing them onto their own computers.

In the past, we shared those scandalous pictures with a few close friends, reminiscing, giggling, and then hiding them back into inside jacket pockets. Now, our most embarrassing moments may be recorded by anyone with a photo-capable phone or digital camera and quickly shared with all of cyberspace.

Talk about the power of the digital!