John & Anne Wiley

Computers can’t yet distinguish things. Yet. So far, human face recognition is maybe their best game. But recognizing everyday things as most any two year old child can do, not so much. Cameras don’t see very well either, in human terms. OK sure, they can see vastly more detail and into the ultraviolet and infrared. But they don’t see. The human eye is really good at the things that matter most to us. But why do scenes like this draw my eye?

1313 Gulls & Buoys

Is it the crowded emptiness of all those boats and no people? The colors and shapes? Memories of toy boats? The unusual perspective? The fact I once sailed on boats like these? Of course it looked different to my eye than to the camera and the computers we’re viewing the pic on. But what would a computer make of it? Or this one?

1314 Dredge Roost

Keeping SB Harbor open requires pumping lots of sand onto East Beach, and though the boats might not like navigating past it the birds absolutely love all this space and have painted it white. So why did I snap it?

Moving objects draw the eye. Especially bright colors. So this was an easy one.

1318 Easy One

We’re usually talking to ATC while flying, and they tell us about “traffic.” The aviator’s word for other aircraft within a couple of miles. Often they’re hard to spot, especially if they’re the same color as the sky, their profile is small, and if the air’s a little hazy. It’s great having an idea where to look but this one half a mile away, bright red and moving across the landscape, was easy to spot. Given that everything’s moving, would a computer have spotted it as easily? Would a computer know what this next one is?

1310 Mission Creek Mouth

Why has my eye been drawn lately to the colors and shapes of this scene? Colors and forms for sure. Also the pipe that the sand travels from the Harbor to East Beach. The contrast of beach grasses. I didn’t notice from the air, but now I’m quite drawn to the palm tree shadows. Do such things sometimes move me to snap, not knowing why, and then jumping out at me looking at the pic later?

Many are predicting that within the next few decades people will have computers and cameras implanted and connecting their nervous systems with the Internet. What will life be like for people born into a world where everyone is hard wired? What will their “eye” be like? Will there still be an “I?”

Sometimes I’m curious what it is that draws me so strongly to some rock formations. True, I seem drawn to many if not most of them. That might simply be the universal human tendency to create stories. Studies of human intelligence tend to focus on two qualities that set us apart from other species, and one of those is our stories. So when rock formations like this draw me back again and again, maybe it’s because of the stories they stimulate in me.

1576 Story Impression

On the large slab, there seem to be petroglyphs carved into the flat surface. I’ve never noticed them before, but now I wonder if a fleeting glimpse of them strengthened my urge to keep returning for another look. Maybe it’s some enchanting quality of the stones themselves, that drew both ancient peoples and me to visit there? I wondered looking at the first pic, if it’s just a play of light. So I looked at this slightly different angle on the same spot snapped a moment later, and the enigmatic shapes still show up.

1579 Perspective Shift

But then I looked for pix from my other flights past the spot, and found this one snapped from much closer.

0424 Different Story

I can still see some of the shapes, but this detailed view magically transforms them into stories of life, weather, light and shadow as they dance with ancient stone that itself was once sand on an even more ancient beach. Maybe my urge to see human symbols there has the same origins as my own yearning to share the stories etched on this blog. Sharing where I was, what I did, what I saw and the effects Life had on me. It is this desire to create and share stories that distinguishes us from other intelligent animals, enabling us to teach and learn the things that produced technologies like space travel and the internet. …and airplanes like Tripp. 🙂