In Ron Burnett’s introduction to How Images Think I was really taken by the cynicism with which he described the development of intelligent images. Throughout the piece he seemed very caught up with this idea that images are subliminally affecting and now perhaps replacing the “real” world, distorting and feeding us meaning that isn’t entirely our own. There was this feeling that our perception is being muddled in this false, matrix-esque system of image-based reality. I couldn’t help but question what Burnett truly meant as he threw around the word “real”. He seemed to point to reality as a pure and definable entity, separate from the images that may represent it, but I’m not sure if I agree with this premise.
To an extent, our entire world is an image. Scientifically our spectrum of visible light is pretty miniscule and we don’t ever come close to seeing the full scope of reality. Everything we see is an approximation, warped for our purposes and filtered at every moment by our judgment of what is significant. In a broad sense we see the world as we perceive it, not as it is. So, it makes me wonder what the actual concern is when Burnett talks about the dangerous middle space between the supposedly distinct virtual and the real.
He states that the problem is the “potential to displace conventional notions of subjectivity”(Burnett 2005) and I suppose the main fear is that there will be a lack of accountability and origin of meaning in a continual exchange between images and users. But is this anything new? We have always engaged in individual and distinct experiences with images while also being unaware of their specific subconscious effects. So perhaps the real issue is magnitude or perhaps the issue has to do with the direction in which we are headed. In Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point he describes the power of context in shaping our thoughts and actions in the development of trends. He talks about how the image of broken windows being fixed in a New York subway caused crime to be cut in half (Gladwell 2002). The increased presence of image based understanding is the cost of being connected in a growing world and the context that these images create may be a very real phenomenon. That being said, I find it hard to look at this development as something to be wary of. The acknowledgement of relativity and the paradigm of reality is always unsettling but I think the fear of brainwashing is largely unjustified. We have always attempted to change our worlds and find them in a new light. The presence of intelligent images is only the next step.