Being without convenient internet access for the past few weeks has put me in an interesting position regarding technology. On the one hand, there is something remarkable about being cut off from the world to a degree; I’m more inclined to read or go for walks or find any other activity. On the other, I can’t easily communicate with my Stateside friends, and I have to sequester myself in a little room in order to research and book travel plans. Beyond that, for any degree of security regarding my plastic card I have to borrow a friend’s computer, re-find all the websites and input information all over again, forcing the entire process to take twice as long. Nor can I send websites to fellow students to check out a hostel or compare options with any great sense of ease.
Which basically means: I miss my laptop and its wireless card terribly.
As for the inspiration behind this entry, I was sorting through my photos from last week’s Italy trip, and out of the 400+ photos I took, approximately 140 garnered the response of “Why did I take a picture of that?”; another fifty were deleted for being crummy duplicates as I sought one good shot, and another 50 were “how many views of the same wall/ceiling/altar/art/pile of dirt could I possibly get?” As it turns out, I have some 362 photos from Italy, after a culling of bad shots, and not including Randolph.
This is the great miracle of the digital age. Where before I would have traveled with 10 rolls of film, with maybe 30 shots per roll, I can now take multiple shots of the same thing without worrying that my memory card will run out, leaving me without that memory of yet another broken piece of pottery. Even better, my memory card can potentially hold 5000 photos (if the little green numbers on the screen are anything to go by). And! I have too many settings to choose from. I can take party shot, night shots, through glass shots, outdoor movement and standing still. No end to the fun with a digital camera.
After all those pictures are taken, I can upload them to a computer, and then share with friends and family worldwide through the magic of the internet, and especially Facebook. Of course, everyone around me is in the same situation. We have digital cameras and internet access; and must greet every Monday e-mail inbox to find that 10 people have tagged you in 1, 2, 3, or 15 photos. Because of my reduced internet access, it takes me a lot longer to get all those photos online and captioned for easy comprehension of the event.
In another lifetime, all my photos would be carefully packed up in film canisters to be brought back to the U.S. in May, and then sent out for developing. It could take weeks for me to finally look back on all the things I did, and by that point, I will have probably forgotten why that particular broken building was significant. Considering my state of mind at the end of the Italy excursion, it’s quite certain I would regret some of the 34 photos of the Forum, and forget all the details. Mind you, those are just the panoramic shots; details of the Forum will be another album, and another set of information helpfully forgotten.
But we live in the technology age, and I can take 400+ photos in a week, delete several of them, and feel the confusion of “what is that? And why do I have a picture of it?” much earlier.
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