Dvorak on Our Modern World

DigitalDame2 writes "If people from the 1920s suddenly landed in the here and now, they'd probably find modern technology a bit weird. Take digital cameras for instance. Nobody would have predicted that most people would now take pictures by holding the camera out in front of them and look at the preview screen to frame a shot. Then there's the iPod phenomenon. Is anyone's music collection that interesting? How many people are being deafened by these things, and what kind of a public health disaster is this? Take a stroll through our modern world with John C. Dvorak's hilarious take."

On the Value of Research

[rueger]

Nobody would have predicted that most people would now take pictures by holding the camera out in front of them and look at the preview screen to frame a shot.

Except that lots of cameras have had little glass screens [tlr-cameras.com] that you looked at while focusing the cameras. Dating from oh, the late 1800s.

What a moron...

[tgd]

Give someone a pro DSLR and they'll still hold it at arms length? Apparently this braniac has never used an SLR or realized you CAN'T get an image on the screen before the shutter opens.

I stopped reading after that. I assume it kept getting worse?

Dvorak's never seen a twin-lens reflex?

[dpbsmith]

What would someone from the 1920s find weird about about "the practice of framing shots in the preview window by holding the camera out in front of yourself?"

How is it weirder than the practice of looking down toward your waist to frame the shot in a twin-lens reflex... like the Rolleiflex [wikipedia.org], available since 1928, wildly popular from the 1920s well into the 1970s? Cheap consumer versions of this camera style were popular, too. In the 1950s my mom took pictures with a "Brownie Reflex," Kodak's cheap twin-lens reflex which used 127 film, was fixed focus, had a fixed aperture, and exactly two shutter settings ("Instantaneous" and "Bulb"). I remember seeing someone with a Bolex 35 mm twin-lens reflex...

How is it weirder from the practice, from the turn of the century at least through the 1990s, if not today, of framing shots by tossing a black cloth over your head and starting at the ground glass in the back of your 4x5 view camera? (Or larger, in the case of Eduard Weston or Ansel Adams?)

Re:Missing some other stuff from the 1920's.

[Doctor Memory]

Dude, Uzi's weren't even invented back then. Al wasted his stoolies with a decent, American-made Thompson submachine gun (the infamous "Tommy gun [nfatoys.com]").

Re:The last line is the best part

[Anonymous Coward]

I am so tempted to mention in his forum that he left out "asking a bunch of random monkeys to type in comments on stories through the internet" but I decided to be a Slashmonkey today instead.

But still,

slashmonkey > John Dvorak.

That is all.

Re:Why use a SLR system on a digital camera?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because a mirror and pentaprism setup is still less expensive than adding a second LCD viewfinder, it's also brighter and much easier to use for focusing, and has the added benefit of not consuming additional electricity. I can run my old 35mm Contax for 6-8 months of heavy use on a single 4LR44 battery (it's about the size of the last joint of my pinky finger) since the only thing that needs power is the light meter and shutter.

Further, the mirror assembly does a very good job of protecting the CCD or CMOS sensor in a DSLR (since there's no mechanical shutter behind the mirror). Without the mirror, it would be incredibly easy to damage the sensor or get it dirty while changing lenses.

Finally, holding the camera to one's face is absolutely a better way to take photographs. This method keeps the camera vastly more stable and goes a long way to preventing problems from camera shake. Yes, there's image stabilization, but that's expensive and costs some battery life.

Then again, I'm a luddite. I still shoot both print and slide film and I shoot with an old Contax and Zeiss lenses. If I need digital, my little Olympus C-8080WZ is adequate in most cases.

Frazz - Live at Bryson Elementary

[Speare]

I like to think of this comic as a sort of sequel to Calvin & Hobbes.

Last week, there was this strip: http://www.comics.com/comics/frazz/archive/frazz-2 0060603.html [comics.com]

For the benefit of those reading past the 30-day limit:

• fifth-grader to fourth-grader: "Well, I'm so old I can remember when people took pictures like this..." [gestures with hands against face]
• "...instead of like this." [gestures with hands at arm's length]
• 60-something teacher to janitor: "Leave it to fifth graders to put typewriters and cars without seatbelts into perspective."
• 20-something janitor (Frazz): "They made cars with no seatbelts?"

Re:To the future! - Hear, hear!

[Dr.Potato]

Just to clarify the problem with ipods (or any other equipment that uses ear-bud speakers), continuous high levels of sound can damage your hearing quite rapidly. While rock concerts and boom-boom cars are periodical events of high-intensity noise, ipods and other MP3 players are being used more and more time.
High intensity noise can cause a temporary threshold shift (TTS) in hearing cells. That's why you leave rock concerts with your ears buzzing... However, if this 'attack' repeats itself too frequently, the 'temporary' becomes permanent (PTS) due to cell death.

But, since this is auto-inflicted damage, its their problem...

Not exactly.

[khasim]

Cell phones, probably. But not necessarily by people from different races mixing in public. It did happen in Northern cities, particularly in places like public transport, which was too crowded to allow for separate sections.

I said that they would be shocked by them eating side-by-side. In the 1920's, segregation laws were very common. You often saw signs saying "No coloreds allowed" in restaurant windows.

Yes, they "mixed" in public. But they ate in different restaurants, used different water fountains and had different public restrooms.

I don't know what a "chippie" is, but skirt hems did reach at least the bottom of the knee in the later '20s.

"Chippy" is 1920's slang for "hooker". And while the hems did reach the bottom of the knee in the later 1920's, it would be a shock to see:

#1. A woman working as something other than a typist or secretary.
#2. Said woman's dress reaching above her knee.

The women going to work wore VERY conservative dresses. They might have worn a dress that touched their knee at night in a speakeasy, but not to the office.

Remember, this was when the Women's Temperance League was gaining political power and pushed Prohibition (Jan 1920).

Re:Of course technology is incremental...

[BreadMan]

>> Not to even mention al the medical technical innovations

Pharmaceuticals, lithotripsy, CAT scans, MRI, plastic IV lines, angioplasty

These are nothing short of magic. The technological advancements in medical care have far outpaced other areas. You can have major work done with only a few stiches. Removing kidney stones would typically require a cut 1/4 the way around your torso, today you can get some stents placed in your body (no cuts) and get the stones blasted out as you sit in a tub of water. Sure you pee purple for a few days, but that's it.

Drugs are another bit of incredible technology. Death from infections rarely happen. Drugs for people with serious mental illness, heart problems, arthritis, are effective & cheap. No mumps, measles, whooping cough or any other childhood illness that usually took one or two kids in a family. A woman dying in child birth (or afterward from infection or botched delivery) wasn't uncommon in the 1920's and now rarely happens thanks to medical advancement.

Re:The "hilarious" is what he missed.

[killjoe]

You have to think of their world of view context as well. I'll paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld.

"If you came from space and you saw a man walking a dog what would you think? The dog is walking ahead of the man, the dog shits, the man picks up the shit and carries it. Who would you think was in charge?"