Last Sunday, I went on a hiking adventure to Minnewaska State
Park. There, I ascended miles and miles of rocky land, enjoying the fresh air
that became crisper and cleaner, as I reached the top of the hills. During my
time there, I took various pictures and videos with my DSLR and my iPhone to
capture the moments forever. I “snapchatted” pictures of the views I witnessed,
“Facebooked” a location and a status of where I was, “Instagrammed” a picture
of myself sitting on the edge of a cliff, and “Tumblred” every apple I
tasted, touched, and smelled in an orchard I come across. After completing all of this, I went home and
looked at everything I posted online and relived each moment, as I intended to.
I regretted the fact that I didn’t take more
photos and videos and regretted that I wasn’t more descriptive in my experience
at the orchard. I wanted more and more details to help me recollect the
memories in the wilderness while I sat here day-dreaming in the deforested city
of Hoboken. At that point, I thought to
myself, does technology engage me or distract me from the wilderness? Did I
miss anything important when I was setting up the right settings in my camera?
Did I lose the sense of nature when I was connected to my data?
A blog post I
encountered on Tumblr from the Crooked Creek Adventure’s blog states that, “It
can be easy to see both sides. If you’re out exploring and taking photos of
everything – are you really taking in nature? Or are you not seeing the forest
for the trees?” Just as this blog post states, there are two extreme opinions when
these questions are brought up. One
opinion includes, “of course technology distracts us from the world, when you’re
staring at your phone screen and not experiencing the world around you, which
is called a distraction.” The other opinion states, “how is technology a
distraction from the real world when you simply want to re-experience the world
around you.”
As I had every
intention to gather as many memories as I could, was I actually experiencing
these memories, or was I just frozen in time, relying on my phone and camera to
experience those memories instead? If my phone and camera and Tumblr blog were
to randomly shutdown forever, will I look back and remember this trip on my
own?
According to an
article in The Atlantic, “In a study published last year in Psychological
Science, Linda Henkel (a psychology professor at Fairfield University in
Connecticut) took participants on a tour of the local university museum. They
were asked to observe and remember certain objects, and at random, photograph
some of them. Later, when Henkel asked them to recall the objects, she found
that people remembered fewer visual details for the ones they had photographed.” In short, corresponding
to the article, what Henkel is trying to say is that “the photos can help us
reconstruct our memories, but they don't take the place of the experience.”
Maybe I should've put my phone away to get the full on experience of my hike. Maybe if I didn't have my technology, I would have experienced and remembered more of the trip; however, now I look back at my footage that I have gathered and realize that they don't represent my memories but exemplify them.
Maybe I should've put my phone away to get the full on experience of my hike. Maybe if I didn't have my technology, I would have experienced and remembered more of the trip; however, now I look back at my footage that I have gathered and realize that they don't represent my memories but exemplify them.
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