Living in the future-past

I don't know where this is all going to end. It's not looking good, or at the very least, things are taking a turn for the peculiar. It's the technology, and the effect is beginning to have on people.
Like at a concert, when the most curious spectacle is not on the stage, but in the audience, as a raft of digital screens take in the scene. Does anyone ever view these images except briefly? What are they taking them for? For their social networking sites, as proof that they have a life?

I find the whole thing obscene. Stupid, really. Or rather, misconceived. I've never been a great fan of photography really, so that shouldn't be ignored. But I do worry that living through a lens is a shameful waste of time. Unless of course, one is a photographer or camera-person! There is a lot to be said for leaving these things to the professionals and learning to simply appreciate experience for what it is. Too little attention paid to present matters really - how many times has this happened to you: on asking someone how the holiday/concert/film was, the following platitudinal reply is given - 'great/grand/fine/lovely'. But I'm sure they have plenty of shite photographs, of themselves doing the same thing in a different place, not travelling, but relocating.

Dear reader, please think for yourself. In this moment, of this moment. Que sera, sera and all that.


"We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future." Marshall McLuhan (1967) The Medium is the Massage.