Thursday, December 27, 2012

A well documented life


Going through old pictures is fascinating. I found a picture of my grandfather, Aunt Rock, Aunt Emma Dell in an old box. I scanned them and now they are preserved for posterity. One black and white faded picture each of these treasured relations. Compare that to the documentation that takes place of a young person in today's society.

A two year old child can expect to be videotaped for at least one hour of his/her existence for every week of childhood. Hours of movies. Baby's first tooth, Baby's first lunch, Baby's first splinter, Baby's first communion, Baby's first period, Baby's first boyfriend, Baby's first fight with Mother, Baby graduates from pre- school, etc.  By the time Baby is forty years old she will have 2080 hours of film. Every snicker doodle of her life will have been recorded and viewed by bored relatives on You Tube.

She can drop her cable subscription at fifty and do nothing but watch the progress of  her own life and have enough programming until she reaches her eightieth birthday. Socrates said, "An unexamined life is not worth living". I guess life today must be really worth living.

1 comment:

  1. As the fourth of four children, I can assure you that the amount of film expended on any child decreases as the number of children increases.

    My baby book has entries up to about six months. One picture with Santa. Except for my hospital photo there are no portraits...just my yearly school pictures. A few snaps of HS graduation. No college grad shots. There was no hired photographer at my wedding.

    And recently it took two hours to find a relatively recent picture for my HS facebookpage...

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