Slide Shows
For people of a certain age (probably 40 or better) the term “Slide Show” doesn’t exclusively mean a series of pictures on a computer screen or a PowerPoint presentation.
Back in the mid to late 20th century, people used to take film photographs and quite often they would have them developed on small translucent bits of plastic surrounded by cardboard. These were called “slides” and they were viewed using by shining a light through them and either projecting them onto a screen or wall or looking through a hand-held magnifier. Americans (I’m not sure if slides were popular in other countries) would gather ‘round the slide projector after vacation to look at the pictures they had taken. It was a social activity, sometimes people would have their friends over a few weeks after a big vacation to have a few drinks or dinner and then you’d have a slide show. It was so popular it even became a punch line to jokes since so many people found looking at other people’s vacation photos boring. I guess it depended on how good a storyteller you were or how good a photographer you were or how many pictures you took.
I don’t recall my parents ever having guests to show off their slides, but gathering the family around the ol’ dining room table was a fairly frequent happening when I was a kid. My dad was an inveterate slide shower and kept up on all the state of the art technology; we had the latest Kodak Carousel slide projector, a pull-down portable screen and each batch of slides sat in its own round removable dispenser that was carefully marked and stored in the closet. He even had an individual slide viewer where you fed a stack of slides on one side, pulled back a plunger that dropped the bottom slide into a slot that you then pushed the plunger through to place the slide in the backlit magnifier. You did this repeatedly as each slide popped the previous one out the other side into a catch tray that kept your stack nice and neat. I think he had the device just so he could sort through the stacks and make the order in the carousels just right.
On occasion if I had been particularly good I would get to operate the clicker that changed the slides on the carousel but more often than not my dad or someone else would do the honors. In any event, it was another occasion where family or friends would gather and socialize.
“Socialize”. That’s a funny word in 2008. There are those “social networking” sites on the Internet where people share ideas and photos and sounds and videos. There are photo sites where people publish the pictures they used to show to groups of friends or family. Nowadays who has time to be truly social? Everyone can look at your pictures (or not) in their own good time. By themselves. At a keyboard. And still call it “socializing”.
We live in interesting times, don’t we? The Internet boosters claim that one of the great things about the web is that it keeps people “connected”. But are people really connecting if they’re just clicking links and looking at websites? Isn’t that a very different experience than gathering in a room yelling and joking at the pictures where your siblings got attacked after disturbing a wasp nest in a cannon in Gettysburg or that damn picture of you crying in a cowboy outfit at the age of 3 and your mother telling you that’s when she knew you were going to be some kind of hippie in college because you hated the guns (ignoring the fact that as an older child you often came home reeking of the gunpowder from the caps that they put in those little red strips that you fed through the “revolver”)?
Are words and images on a screen the same as actual human contact? For those under about 30 I suspect they might have to be. I look outside my office and see people IM’ing people 2 cubicles away. “Water cooler conversation” is now as much of an anachronism as “carbon copy” in the traditional sense. The only people who seem to slip away from their desks to socialize in the old sense of the word are the smokers. And even those folks aren’t immune to the spread of technology – I often see people smoking outside the building hammering away on their mobile devices, though I suppose on a day like today it’s better to be outside answering your e-mail.
I’m curious to see where this will all lead. Maybe the technology will bring back what I humbly consider to be true socialization. Maybe in 10 years people won’t be able to afford to drive anywhere that’s not absolutely necessary so instead they’ll have virtual parties where they share their pictures and videos in real-time while yelling and laughing over web-cams. I’m not sure that it’ll be exactly like we used to socialize in the old days, but it’ll probably have to do.
Maybe if I’m good, I can do the clicking on the picture software when we throw one of those parties.
Back in the mid to late 20th century, people used to take film photographs and quite often they would have them developed on small translucent bits of plastic surrounded by cardboard. These were called “slides” and they were viewed using by shining a light through them and either projecting them onto a screen or wall or looking through a hand-held magnifier. Americans (I’m not sure if slides were popular in other countries) would gather ‘round the slide projector after vacation to look at the pictures they had taken. It was a social activity, sometimes people would have their friends over a few weeks after a big vacation to have a few drinks or dinner and then you’d have a slide show. It was so popular it even became a punch line to jokes since so many people found looking at other people’s vacation photos boring. I guess it depended on how good a storyteller you were or how good a photographer you were or how many pictures you took.
I don’t recall my parents ever having guests to show off their slides, but gathering the family around the ol’ dining room table was a fairly frequent happening when I was a kid. My dad was an inveterate slide shower and kept up on all the state of the art technology; we had the latest Kodak Carousel slide projector, a pull-down portable screen and each batch of slides sat in its own round removable dispenser that was carefully marked and stored in the closet. He even had an individual slide viewer where you fed a stack of slides on one side, pulled back a plunger that dropped the bottom slide into a slot that you then pushed the plunger through to place the slide in the backlit magnifier. You did this repeatedly as each slide popped the previous one out the other side into a catch tray that kept your stack nice and neat. I think he had the device just so he could sort through the stacks and make the order in the carousels just right.
On occasion if I had been particularly good I would get to operate the clicker that changed the slides on the carousel but more often than not my dad or someone else would do the honors. In any event, it was another occasion where family or friends would gather and socialize.
“Socialize”. That’s a funny word in 2008. There are those “social networking” sites on the Internet where people share ideas and photos and sounds and videos. There are photo sites where people publish the pictures they used to show to groups of friends or family. Nowadays who has time to be truly social? Everyone can look at your pictures (or not) in their own good time. By themselves. At a keyboard. And still call it “socializing”.
We live in interesting times, don’t we? The Internet boosters claim that one of the great things about the web is that it keeps people “connected”. But are people really connecting if they’re just clicking links and looking at websites? Isn’t that a very different experience than gathering in a room yelling and joking at the pictures where your siblings got attacked after disturbing a wasp nest in a cannon in Gettysburg or that damn picture of you crying in a cowboy outfit at the age of 3 and your mother telling you that’s when she knew you were going to be some kind of hippie in college because you hated the guns (ignoring the fact that as an older child you often came home reeking of the gunpowder from the caps that they put in those little red strips that you fed through the “revolver”)?
Are words and images on a screen the same as actual human contact? For those under about 30 I suspect they might have to be. I look outside my office and see people IM’ing people 2 cubicles away. “Water cooler conversation” is now as much of an anachronism as “carbon copy” in the traditional sense. The only people who seem to slip away from their desks to socialize in the old sense of the word are the smokers. And even those folks aren’t immune to the spread of technology – I often see people smoking outside the building hammering away on their mobile devices, though I suppose on a day like today it’s better to be outside answering your e-mail.
I’m curious to see where this will all lead. Maybe the technology will bring back what I humbly consider to be true socialization. Maybe in 10 years people won’t be able to afford to drive anywhere that’s not absolutely necessary so instead they’ll have virtual parties where they share their pictures and videos in real-time while yelling and laughing over web-cams. I’m not sure that it’ll be exactly like we used to socialize in the old days, but it’ll probably have to do.
Maybe if I’m good, I can do the clicking on the picture software when we throw one of those parties.
Comments