Scanners

I have never been one of those who believes that technology is neutral, quite apart from its ability to be used for any purpose we can think up, our minds co-evolve in the world we live in. Rupert Murdoch keeps talking about digital tourists and digital natives and, to a degree, he's right; but he forgets that we are all being shaped constantly by our environment, and by the technology in that environment.

Yes, our kids treat cellphones and laptops and broadband as givens, but after a while, so do we old fogies. New technologies change not only how we think about the field of their application, they change the thinking apparatus itself. They change what we can think, and right now the scanner is playing an interesting part in that.

I spent part of the Christmas break with my brother in New Zealand and we spent some time digging out some old photos that he had managed to preserve. Amongst them was box of about 30 packs of slides that haven't been seen for about 45 years at least. He doesn't have a projector, and neither do I, and in any case slide projectors don't network. So when I came back to Sydney I bought a second hand scanner that does slides and set to work.

One slide I found was this. It was taken at Christmas 1955, the good looking dude in the cowboy suit you know, the short Indian is my brother who has looked after the slides and the blue Indian is my sister, who had only 18 months to live.

I have a few photos of my sister, most of them from after she fell ill with a brain tumor, if I had only an old projector with a light bulb I would probably not have bothered even opening the slide boxes, looking at pictures as an end in themselves is not what I do, but being able to share them, connect them back into my life, that's different, and so I use the scanner and take the time and make the effort because the emotional and psychic satisfaction is enormous.

Those are ideas I could not have even contemplated without this technology.

Here's another one that we found. I have plenty of photos of my mother who had a pretty hard life in many ways, and not just because she had me for a son and lost a daughter. All of that was ahead of her when this photo was taken.

Most family pics are those daft smiley ones, this is the only one I've ever seen that really gets to the woman, the human being to whom all that stuff happened.

If I hadn't been thinking about scanning and sharing the photos with the rest of the family, that too might have rotted quietly away and never been seen again. I wish I knew what she was thinking and feeling, but knowing what I do about her life, I can tell you that this one is authentic in some way.

But scanners let you do other stuff as well. One of my favourite places is BagNewsNotes where the photos that make it into the media get a meta-analysis and a meta-meta-analysis. Not only what is going on in the photos and how they reinforce or undermine various messages, but also why, of all the alternatives, did the editor choose this or that pic to illustrate the story?

Its great mental exercise and frequently fun and usually subversive. In fact always subversive because once you start analysing the photo, you destroy its power.

Here's one photo you wont see on the web, at least I couldn't find it, yet here it was, gracing the front page of Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald, thanks to the trusty digital camera, lifting and publishing it was a trivial exercise and so I can talk about it in ways that would not be possible otherwise.

The headline refers to recent, pretty overtly racist comments from the PM that fit into a series of statements making it pretty clear that to be an Australian, you need to become white, male and Christian.

One MP dug herself a neat little hole a couple of weeks ago by declaring that the RU486 pill was essentially a way for "Australians" to commit suicide because their abortion rate would turn the country Muslim in short order.

So you can see where the ruling party is coming from, but just look at the photo. This is to commemorate 10 years of Howard's Prime Ministership and the photographer has gone straight to the fascist/ romantic lexicon for an image.

The dark, brooding landscape of 1930's romanticism with the leader as solitary hero, grand, thoughtful, far seeing. And this is Australia, in the midst of a drought that sees our dams relentlessly stuck at 42% full and falling if anything, so the iconic image associates the leader with water; the rainmaker.

Then to top it off is the rainbow over his head, the Christian sign of God's protection, he rules not by engaging with the community that votes for him, but by divine protection and will. This is a democracy?

Oh, and one more thing. The current Australian Government is anti Kyoto, dislikes multiculturalism and treats Aboriginals with patronising contempt. The predominant environmental organisation in the world is greenpeace, the Rainbow Warrior is their vessel, the Multiculturalism is often known as the Rainbow Coalition and a major character in the Aboriginal Dreamtime is Goorialla, the Rainbow Serpent, in a single stroke Howard has appropriated their signs. Here's the scan.

Presumably the PM OK'd the image as his representative to us groundlings and Mao, Kim, Adolf, Iosif Dzhugashvili, would all have got off on this. But what on earth prompted the Sydney Morning Herald to publish it? That's what I want to know.