The rise of the selfie in the past two years is indicative of how technology can transform our everyday existence into a surreal and possibly even hellish reality, says KUSHAN MITRA
In an age where a hundred mobile devices get launched every month, many people, at least those old enough to remember, would have forgotten the Nokia 7650. This was a revolutionary device because it was the first large-scale commercially available mobile phone that came with a camera. It was not a great camera; it had a resolution of half a megapixel and transferring pictures was a pain, and this was also a time before Facebook and Twitter, the age of instant sharing.
Today, all but the cheapest (or conversely most secure) mobile phones come with a multi-megapixel camera. Facebook has become the largest repository of photographs the world has ever known and a stunning 100 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. And the mobile phone has evolved into more than a means of communication; it has become an appendage to our lives. Have a bombastic friend who makes wild claims, correcting him or her now takes a few seconds. Checking up on local weather and traffic conditions can be done instantly, and the latest generation mobile phones also keep tabs on your health.
There is no doubt that the past decade has seen our lives change for the better. And this was led from the first camera-enabled mobile phones. Now with multi-megapixel cameras on mobiles, which can take good enough pictures, as Apple is doing, to be plastered on hoardings.
The advent of mobile phone cameras has also democratised photography; taking pictures was once an expensive task. Not only were cameras expensive but so was film and the cost of processing it. Digital photography just upended film photography and once sensors were small enough to fit on phones it was only a matter of time that they took over the world.
Mobile phone photography was often derided as unsophisticated, but Apple’s latest adverts where photographs shot on an iPhone 6 have been put on hoardings show that mobile phone cameras have come a long way in the past decade; so much so that they have killed the point-and-click digital camera.
Yet, the past year has seen an unwelcome addition to the world of mobile phone photography — the selfie stick, which has made the self-aggrandising photograph, the ‘selfie’ even more irritating.
Several recent studies have pointed out a connection between the habit of taking selfies and some mental conditions, with narcissism being the quite obvious one. One can argue that for celebrities taking selfies, which they then share with their millions of followers on social networks, is one thing. But for the population at large this obsession is definitely a growing sign that not all technological progress is good.
The biggest problem your writer has with the selfie stick is that it impedes on the space of other individuals. A recent example was given by political commentator Ashok Malik, who said that during a recent visit to Dubai airport, a fellow passenger going in the opposite direction on an escalator almost knocked him out. “Not only did he not realise that he was a danger to himself, because he was standing the wrong way round on an escalator, but he was also a danger to others,” Malik said.
On a recent visit to Prague, your writer noticed that on the Charles Bridge, one of the landmarks of the Gothic part of this beautiful eastern European city, hundreds of people were taking pictures on selfie sticks. Running and turning around with a four-five foot stick, lightweight as it might be, is not really recommended in crowded parts of the world.
The story of the selfie stick is quite remarkable. The first ‘extendable’ stick for cameras was invented by an engineer in Japanese camera company Minolta. Hiroshi Ueda lost a camera when he asked a boy to take a picture of him at The louvre. The ‘extender’ stick solved the problem where one had to trust a stranger with your camera. However, this may be the first example of a selfie stick, a Canadian man Wayne Fromm reinvented this stick, calling it the Quik Pod, during quite coincidentally, a European holiday.
Fromm’s ‘Quik Pod’ is a fairly advanced model designed for adventurous travellers, and he doesn’t make any money from the cheap `500 knock-offs sold across the world.
One reason selfie sticks have become popular is that like ever-improving mobile phone cameras, they have become very cheap. Also, the weight of mobile phones has dropped dramatically, meaning that in pure physical terms, the weight suspended at the end of a selfie stick, which acts as a lever (enhancing the weight), does not take much effort to use.
But while these are good reasons for its success, the selfie stick is increasingly being recognised as a public nuisance and a danger to public safety. Stadiums, museums (including The louvre) have banned this irritating device. Thankfully in India, people have not really cottoned onto the selfie stick and we can only hope and pray that they do not cotton onto it for years to come.