Sweet Memories

Since I met my lovely wife in 2002, I have created a new photo computer file for each year that we have been together and I will continue to do so, hopefully for many more years to come. The ten-year photographic record has seen three generations of digital camera including my latest DSLR. My photography is getting more ambitious, the latest shots include birds of prey, swallows swooping for refreshment from our pool and a gecko stalking a small bug. I have been an 'on and off' amateur photographer for the past 40 years, but technology has made the task much easier now than when I acquired a 35mm film SLR camera in the 1970s. That said, having an eye for a good shot is a skill that does not always come naturally (my wife is much better at it than me) and my engineering background sometimes encourages me to become too seduced with the technicalities of photography (ISO, aperture, speed, etc) rather than the picture I want to capture!

I have never shared my photos beyond close friends and family. I am not one for uploading thousands of photos on to Facebook probably because even prior to the digital revolution, I was bored to tears by other peoples' photos. I can remember 35mm slide shows round at friends' homes, the lights went out and shortly afterwards someone nudged me when I started snoring!

Despite the wealth of technology that we now enjoy, there is no doubt in my mind that there is no man-made wizardry that can match the human brain with its integrated memory. Memories are interesting and the data storage capacity of the brain is phenomenal but the retrieval process is not always as efficient as a modern search engine like Google. I am often frustrated by my 'senior moments' forgetting recent events, faces, names or even the pin number of one of my credit cards. On the other hand, I can remember childhood events with clarity. For example, my parents moved house in north London when I was three years old. The garden was overgrown and my father used a scythe to cut the grass. I fell on it and still have a faint scar on my knee to prove it. I have no problem retrieving that memory from my grey matter. Memories are not just visual, as we all know it is easy to memorise taste and other sensations. So I can re-live the sensation of eating a toffee apple, even though I haven't had one for years - decades in fact!

Sharing memories with others is interesting because the memory has to be communicated as a story in words and the recipient will use his or her imagination to create a picture, if indeed he or she is interested! So the 'copying' from one brain to another is not as precise as, for example, sharing photographs on Facebook. However, it is the lack of precision that, in my opinion, makes memories so exciting compared with photographic records. Our brains can fool us into remembering what we want, or maybe don't want, to see - like the heat haze in the desert that transforms dry sand into a refreshing lake. False images can be retained and passed on to others as 'facts', very often spreading negative thoughts like unwanted viruses or conversely, creating enthusiasm in a discontented society.

The mind doesn't need adjustment to capture an event. The equivalents of ISO, aperture and speed are all taken care of for is. So I can vividly recall the swallows swooping into my pool but to capture the event photographically was time-consuming and challenging, involving the use of a high-quality telephoto lens and multi-shot photography.

Technology is fantastic and I'm a bit of a geek, but I never lose sight of the fact that the human ability to memorise and recall masses of events beats any competitive hardware and software processing solutions.......but will I remember writing this article in five years time?.......Maybe!

Do you know what you are drinking?

I like this argument put forward by Richard Dawkins:

The biologist Lewis Wolpert calculates 'that there are many more molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water in the sea'. Since all water on the planet cycles through the sea, it would seem to follow that every time you drink a glass of water, the odds are good that something of what you are drinking has passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell.