[ExI] photography, was: RE: Avoiding bad black swan events

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dan
.

 

>.I think one reason Galloping Gertie is remembered so well is that it was
captured on film. That makes it more memorable than a dry report of a bridge
failure.

Exactly.  Have you ever wondered why you have heard of the shootout at the
OK Corral?  It was a seemingly minor event in a nearly lawless town in the
late 19th century American west, three fatalities, but shootouts a lot like
that one happened all over the west in those days, and indeed still do to
this day: bad guys shoot each other, and the cops.  It wasn't a real case of
good vs evil and the lawman won exactly.  Apparently all the participants
were in the ambiguous zone of the legal scale.

 

So how did this particular shootout get so famous as to have all that legend
grow up around it, a major motion picture, all the books, a town that lives
of tourism from it, all that?  There was a guy who lived in Tombstone who
was an early photographer, this still being the hot new tech in 1881.  He
took pictures of everything.  That being an early example of photography, it
became waaaay more famous than the information content of rather ordinary
event deserves.

 

That Galloping Gertie film is way cool.  You can view it on YouTube.

 

spike

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