His background is impressive and he had some interesting things to say, however Mr. Rosenthal needs to work on his public speaking skills. His lecture didn't really hold my attention, and I'm not sure I agreed with what he had to say. I know that no media comes anywhere close to reproducing an image as well as we see with our eyes, but I believe that's as it should be. Television and photographs and the like are both representational and subjective mediums--any image that we reproduce is like shorthand for the eyes. An artist doesn't want to show you what they see exactly as they see it, it's usually one isolated aspect or message. If televesion or photographs looked as real the world, I think it would be more dangerous than beneficial to society. If that were the case, media could easily become a replacement for the real world, and that shouldn't happen.
As for the discussion at the end about not having a durable means of recording our history, that's an extremely bleak, materialistic, and pessimistic technological goal. As it stands we have fairly accurate records of human history dating back to biblical times, and calling current digital media inadequate for this purpose is ridiculous. Pointing out all of digital and paper media's recordkeeping fallacies anticipates the worst case scenario both for our civilization and our meida. Why should we live everyday assuming not only that our cds will get eaten by tropical bacteria, but that something is going to wipe out our civilization and the memory of it. Our media lasts as long as we need it to, and human beings, believe it or not, are capable of memory. Everything we know, the next generation will know too, and the next, and if the next one gets wiped out, no one will care that they don't remember because they'll be dead. Why are people obsessed with "what they'll leave behind" and all these artificial forms of immortality? If we manage to record every detail of every aspect of our lives on some form of futuristic durable media, what purpose will it serve? Who will read it? why?
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Adele,
I appreciated your comments on Eric's talk. Sometimes "scientists" or engineers do not make the best lecturers. The only thing I ask is that you keep an open mind to the technology and biology research that he presented in class. If he is correct and he does get to make a complete prototype camera in the next few years, it will be interesting to follow its impact (or not) on photographers and/or society.
When the telephone was invented, many people who first witnessed it demonstration thought that it was going to be a "broadcast medium" much like the radio became. As we see in technology development from THE NEW MEDIA READER, one "never knows" what hits and gets picked up.
Again, thanks for your honesty and comments.
Cynthia
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