In a previous post titled “How perceptive are you?” I included a link to a video that illustrates – among other things – how easy it is to miss out on what’s really happening.
Meanwhile I’d made a note of a fascinating 5′ video featuring Francis Coppola, an iconic and innovative film director.
What initially attracted me in it is Coppola’s statement that
Technology is a servant. It’s not a master.
There’s plenty to say on that. So I was going to explore that further, as it raises interesting questions about the sources of power in our life, generally.
Who (or what) is the master, and who (or what) the servant?
I mean, for instance, is your work stronger than your family, and if so is it stronger than you? And what about the pull from that box filled with Belgian chocolates? Who’s the boss?
But then, as I replayed the Coppola clip to prepare myself to write, I listened to how Coppola pronounces the word ‘See’ early on in the recording (at the 29” mark).
Just this one word, pronounced this way, had a strong effect on me.
Seeing, in the Coppola way, I imagine isn’t merely merely letting fotons hit your retina.
I believe he refers to the complex process of fully absorbing ideas and letting them melt in your mind and subtly blend with the other flavours of what’s already there along with musings on what may be.
It’s an entirely different kind of seeing. It’s seeing that morphs into noticing.
Conversely it’s the failing to notice that the first video (with the card trick) highlights so well.
It’s the kind of noticing that fades into the background when we’re simply too busy to notice… anything.
I’m reminded of a Sherlock Holmes quote I came across a few days ago:
Watson: “Holmes, you see everything.”
Holmes: “I see no more than you, but I have trained myself to notice what I see.”
Your blog-post reminds me the Vice-Principal of my Secondary School. One day he was covering for one of our teachers and he was having a discussion with us about what it means to really see. He asked all of us who got a bus to school to put our hands up. He then asked us how many times a day we saw the front of the bus. For most of us it was 2 times a day. We had been at the school for 5 years at that point, so we’re talking about well over 1000 times for each student. He then asked if any of us could tell him the number of lights on the front of the bus. Most of us said 2, some of us said 4, some 6. The actual number was 10.
That video of Francis Coppola comes from Memory and Imagination which is a 1990 documentary about the US Library of Congress. You can find other YouTube clips from this film at http://www.mlfilms.com/productions/m_and_i
One of my favourite clips is the one of Steve Jobs – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kalMB8jDnY – where (around the 4min 30sec mark), he describes the computer as the equivalent of a “bicycle for our minds”.
Really fits in which the idea of technology as the servant concept.