My Dear Friend Ron,
This is SO very wrong that it is beyond me to enumerate the ways ... let me
brgin by just exasperating the expostulation that I have NEVER seen such a
level of fear (& loathing ?) of technology expressed as that among
archivists ... followed closely on their heels by historic archaeologists
... of which your reaction seems probably stereotypical.
Toxic-chemical-coated-paper-based photography is DEAD, DEAD, DEAD ... yes, I
know you latter-day-luddites keep trying to breath life into this rotting
corpse (the same way Mac owners imagined their South-Parkian smugness would
defeat the combined evil of IBM-Intel-Microsoft in the PC wars) ... but I'm
afraid there's no hope of resuscitation. Do your 401(k) a favor & ditch that
Kodak stock before its too late ... call your broker, TODAY!
I thought we archaeologists were supposed to study archaic technologies
(and, yes, I tend to 'venerate the past' like most of us do) ... not worship
them!
I heard someone aver, here, that digital cameras will never hold a candle to
the resolution produced by conventional (silver based) B&W cameras. I've got
a digital camera that will shoot 16mb color & B&W images in-the-raw ... that
can be interpolated to 24mb and software enhanced to 32mb (and store
thousands of images on itsy-bitsy memory cards ... a selection of which fits
conveninetly in my left shirt pocket, weighing cummulatively less than a
single roll of film, and will represent more shots than can be made from a
hefty truckload of film ... and the same camera will do hours-and-hours of
video and audio, too, at the push of a button ... for those panoramic
lookarounds, those long trench profiles, those impromptu oral informant
interviews, etc. etc.).
Tell me, what PRACTICAL use of an image (in archaeological or historical
photography) can you imagine that will EVER require greater resolution than
that? I can shoot a digital image of any historic structure and have my
software (automatically) run parallax and distortion corrections and produce
a scaled drawing of the building that is more accurate than any you can
scale-off of conventional photographs ... and in one-tenth the time.
Futhermore, I can INSTANTANEOUSLY archive safe copies on any or all of the
14 separate computers/ servers/ networks that I have access/rights on ...
and even "the Big One" (viz: the comet that's likely to alter our climate a
whole lot more rapidly and drastically than Geoff fears our coal-fired power
plants are doing it) is not gonna wipe them all out (but what of the paper
photos, if it lands on Washington? Or the British burn it again? Or ... or
... or ...).
Last year, just across Martin Luther King Bouvelard from my office, on the
campus of the University of Texas, researchers for the first time
sucessfully used a laser trap to consistently capture and measure the same
small number of atoms, a landmark accomplishment on the way to building a
fully operational quantum computer (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_quantum_computing ). Another team
are doing research (far along in it I understand) on a radical new processor
that will accomplish a TRILLION operations per second. Other research teams
at UT are working on biologically integrated nano-technology (and that's
just a small part of the promising research on one campus). How many years
do you think it will be when we shall have available super-high-resolution
implanted cameras/sensors that record EVERYTHING near us at all times across
the whole EM spectrum, and shame the Borg in their sophistication and
esthetics? At the present rate of progress, I think I may just live long
enough to see it come about.
Digital photo technology, for all day-to-day real-world purposes (including
the esoterica of archaeology) has already SURPASSED conventional photography
... in terms of cost and ease ...for environmental friendliness ... in
creating and using the images ... in security of preservation of images ...
in archival/storage ... in retrieval ... in editing ... in printing ... in
reproduction ... in transmitting electronically.
Nothing published anymore is printed from photographs; even the "photos" in
books showing the work of art photographers is digitized. What use is the
technically higher resolution afforded by conventional silver-grained B&W
photographs when nothing is ever printed at a higher resolution than even
the moderately-priced digital cameras of today will produce? How can you
draw comfort from flammable scraps of paper in a (flammable) cardboard box
sitting on a (probably wood and flammable, too) shelf in a questionably
fireproof building in Washington, D.C. and yet, be fearful that a digital
image will somehow evaporate or be lost because there won't be any machines
that can read the language in which they are written? I just don't
understand it!
Respectfully raged,
Bob Sklies
Fm: "Ron May" <[log in to unmask]>
Face it, the only thing > that will survive the next century will be paper
in HVAC controlled spaces.
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