The Rip Van Winkle Effect:

Encountering Digital Photography

In Washington Irving's story "Rip Van Winkle", the central character, Rip, a Dutchman, undergoes a life-altering experience: after accepting a few drinks from a distinctly odd-looking crew he encounters while hunting in the "Kaatskill Mountains" of the American colony of New York, he feels drowsy, leans against a tree for a nap, and awakens twenty years later, to a changed world. A revolution had occurred, and the portrait of King George at the local tavern had been replaced with a portrait of George Washington.

Revolutions, especially technological ones, sometimes catch us unaware, as if, like Rip, we'd slept through them. In a single lifetime many of us have witnessed the advent of space exploration, solid-state electronics, personal computers, optical disc recording and playback, the sequencing of the human genome, extraordinarily lightweight but strong bicycles, online banking, and nearly instant electronic mail delivery. At the same time, older technologies persist, creating a rich, complex mosaic of technological cultures, subcultures and disputed boundaries. There are places in Ontario, for instance, where a rider can pedal a titanium-frame bike down a country road, listening to music on an MP3 player weighing mere ounces, while overtaking an Amish family riding in a horse-drawn buggy, and, in turn, be overtaken by a sleek, modern CD-sporting automobile that is, nonetheless, powered by an early-20th-Century-style internal combustion engine. Ironies and contradictions abound.

One of the consequences of this technology matrix is that you sometimes get "stuck" in an older, though perfectly adequate technology -- such as writing with a fountain pen on paper -- without even being aware of newer possibilities. It's when you awaken to these possibilities that you experience the Rip Van Winkle Effect: the perception that the world has changed without informing you, much less asking your permission.

Being an early adopter of computer technologies, I've been in a position to observe the impact of this technology on others. In the early days of personal computers -- microcomputers as they were first known -- it was not uncommon to see someone's work methodologies transformed as they discovered WordStar, VisiCalc, or later, WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, Word, Excel, or the more recent OpenOffice Writer. While some resisted technology forced on them by a changing workplace, others experienced an almost religious epiphany: "Where has this been all my life?" When we connect with a new technology, we're a bit like Rip, looking at a landscape that is at once familiar, yet irrevocably altered.

The Rip Van Winkle Effect becomes stronger the longer you've lived. It's the gap between the familiar and the new that results in the deepest impact. Accustomed as I am to computer technology, it never extended into music for me. A campus folksinger from the 60's, I still play acoustic six-string and twelve-string guitar occasionally, both of which are virtually unchanged from that era. Yet several of my musician friends now have relatively inexpensive recording studio capabilities in their homes, something unimaginable back when we were doing Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton and Woody Guthrie covers. Even more astonishing, my own son has become an electronic musician (www.ironimp.com), creating music from synthesizers and computer technologies undreamt of in the pioneering days of "Switched-On Bach".

Despite being an early computerist, one particular technology slipped past me nearly unheeded. Digital photography, a revolutionary change in the way images are captured and processed, was well on its way to maturity before I fully tuned in to it. It was my comeuppance: a blow to the incipient arrogance of the technology elitist. Quite frankly, I had dismissed digital photography as a tech toy. The early low-resolution images I'd seen reminded me of the crappy amateur Polaroid prints of yesteryear; convenience was its sole virtue. I dismissed digital as a technology that wasn't ready for prime time.

In hindsight I can see that I was blinded to the potential of digital photography because I was already a serious photographer. Specializing in black-and-white images printed in a traditional darkroom, my modus was film, and my cultural icons were Leica, Rollei, Nikon, and Hasselblad. I knew cameras and I knew lenses, and I was once serious enough about them to spend a year pursuing an MFA in Photography. Aside from auto-focus and auto-exposure, neither of which I used, photography had progressed very little since the last major breakthrough: the advent of single-lens reflex (SLR) camera-body design in the late 50's and early 60's. Fundamentally, until digital, photography had changed very little since the invention of roll film. You exposed a light-sensitive medium and chemically developed the medium into negatives or positives.

My curiosity was finally piqued by some trusted friends of mine who swore by digital. On a whim, I purchased a Canon G2 -- a four megapixel point-and-shoot camera that had been getting good reviews at the time. My film prejudice evaporated instantly and, like many before me, I exclaimed, "Where has this been all my life?" I was Rip, awakening into a familiar, yet eerily different, world. Digital photography was not perfect, but it was fun! I have subsequently made the logical transition to digital SLR and although there are still issues with digital photography, such as constricted dynamic range and the need to learn somewhat demanding image-editing skills, the fun and convenience of digital won me over. I still shoot film, and likely will as long as I can buy it, but I now understand why digital photography has become so popular with so many people.

Speaking of film, though, what happens to older technologies when new ones become dominant? In some cases, typewriters for instance, they simply disappear, or become niche-market items. The Amish still use horse-drawn buggies so buggies, buggy whips, and harnesses can still be purchased.

Newer technologies sometimes transform older ones into an art form. Vinyl LP's and tube amplifiers enjoy cult status among audiophiles who prefer the warmer sound of analog audio technologies. Digital photography is turning film photography into an art form. As professional photographers, at one end of the spectrum, and family snapshooters, at the other, embrace digital and put aside or sell their film gear, manufacturers of traditional photographic materials have felt the impact. Ilford nearly went bankrupt. Agfa appears to have ceased all manufacture of photographic materials, and Kodak has undergone massive layoffs and product consolidation. Presumably, like vinyl LP's and tube amplifiers, film will continue to be available to the art photographer and those who simply prefer film, though the selection will likely not be what it once was.

Not surprisingly, any change brings resistance and even resentment. This is a normal reaction to change, but in photography, where there is still much that can be praised about film and film cameras, the change has hit some photographers hard. There is, for instance, a "rightness" about a beautifully-printed black-and-white darkroom print that digital is only beginning to approach. The tug to stick with traditional means of producing photographic images can be strong -- strong enough that a few internet forums have emerged to help members keep in touch with film and darkroom developments. Forums such as APUG (Analog Photography Users Group), Rangefinder Forum, and the Classic Camera and Leica forums on photo.net provide electronic meeting places for the faithful. But, of course, the digital photography forums outnumber the analog ones by a large number. Digital photography is popular and it will likely remain so, and while digital and film photography will coexist for years, perhaps decades, one medium is in the ascendancy and the other is in decline.

The emergence of digital photography as a technology illustrates once again how rapidly the technological substrate of our culture is subject to rapid change. Our acts of coping with, and reacting to, changes of this kind are, perforce, philosophical: in what ways do these technologies contribute to the "good" life. What, in a technological age, is the good life. How do we define it?

None of this escaped our soulmate, Rip. When he returned to civilization he was amazed, as well as disoriented. He is said to have lived a relatively happy, if puzzled, life in his new world, but I suspect he carried within himself a nagging sense of not quite belonging. A life of constant, rapid change is not an easy life.