By Naomi Dolin-Aubertin
The internet crashes and no one can do any work at all. It's easy to forget that things weren't always this way. As a culture, we have become dependent on technology and our easy access to it. Let's take a look back at where we've come from.
1. Remember when you had to go to the library to look up information (the Dewey Decimal System!). Or better yet, an entire set of encyclopedias? A legend says that the Guinness Book of World Records was created to settle bar arguments. Or you could take the official record:10 November 1951
Sir Hugh Beaver, Chairman of the Guinness Brewery, is out hunting game birds by the River Slaney in County Wexford, Ireland, when he misses a shot at a golden plover. Sir Hugh wonders if the plover is the fastest game bird in Europe but can't find a reference book that answers the question.
Three years later the first Guinness Book was complied. Today, Wikipedia has made those types of impassioned debates superfluous.
2. Pictures of food, pictures of clouds, pictures of your feet on the beach; what did people do before Instagram and hipster filters? How did they document their lives? Well:
Pablo Picasso...was known to leave his studio windows open and to paint the pigeons that flew through.[1]
Roman statues were made with detachable heads, so that one head could be removed and replaced by another.[2]
Leonardo da Vinci was left-handed and his personal notes were written starting at the right side of the page to the left. This special technique called “mirror writing” made all the people who wanted to read his notebooks to use a mirror. [3]
ome to think of it, I think they would have liked Instagram and camera phones.
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| Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata at the Metropolitan Opera House |
3. Before Netflix binges and Roku/TiVo, there was the theater and especially opera. The drama, the suspense, the violent passions and violent endings with incredible music flowing throughout.
Richard Strauss’ 1905 opera Salome (“zahl-oh-may”) about Salome and John the Baptist was so graphically violent that it was banned at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for decades. It includes incest, nudity, murder, and a dramatic scene where Salome kisses the lips of John the Baptist’s severed head.[4]
Take that modern television!
It's clear we've come a long way. A small takeaway I've been thinking about for a while, a New Year's resolution if you will. When you're in a restaurant or out at the bar and you're tempted to reach for your phone to document your delicious, amazing-looking sushi or pull up Wikipedia to settle a dispute, consider staying your hand. A digital life is all well and good, but so is life in the unplugged, disconnected lane. I leave you with one final thought:
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