THE IDEAS PRESENTED ON THIS PAGE ARE THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF BOB KIGER WHO IS SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VIEWS EXPRESSED.
Revised August 19, 2008
Communication technology as classifier for "Ages of Man"
using vector based image analysis
We greatfully acknowledge the contribution of Dr. John H. Bodley, of Washington State University, whose "Power of Scale" causes us to classify each age by its Primal - Imperical - Commercial assets.
[Note: We gave symbols to each of the cultures which will be containers for content. and are shown below]
We are currently working on a vector based image analysis of cultures based on Primal - Imperical - Commercial components.
Fore Age | Stone Age | Metal Age | Literacy Age | Industry Age | Videography Age | ? Age
Fore Age
Primal .................Imperical...........Commercial
Which ancestor first made a tool out of this vine? What kind of tools? - Photo by Bob Kiger - 1986
"Human ancestors living before the Stone Age likely used objects as tools, a behavior that scientists find today among chimpanzees. Wild chimpanzees in Africa exhibit a range of tool-using behaviors. For example, they use bent twigs to fish for termites, chewed wads of leaves to soak up liquid, and branches and stones as hammers, anvils, missiles, or clubs. However, when prehistoric humans began to make stone tools they became dramatically distinct from the rest of the animal world. Although other animals may use stone objects as simple tools, the intentional modification of stone into tools, as well as using tools to make other tools, appear to be behaviors unique to humans. This stone toolmaking and tool-using behavior became central to the way early humans adapted to their environment and almost certainly had a profound effect on human evolution." [Encarta]
We would assert that primates may have found and used very fine grade meteorite "stones" as either a hammer or anvil, leading to the harnessing of fire.
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Early human scavenger / gatherers increased their perimeter of resource by learning to run long distances, thereby increasing the amount of meat (protein) that they could access. Over time this increased their brain size.
The ability to effectively gather and scavenge, by dividing tasks among the group, indicates that primal communication between humans through signs, clicks and other sounds was critical to their advancement. Man running by Eadweard Muybridge (April 9, 1830 – May 8, 1904) an English-born photographer, known primarily for his early use of multiple cameras to capture motion. |
Stone Age
Abstract art was found on two pieces of ochre in a cave on the southern Cape shore of the Indian Ocean. Previously, the earliest evidence of abstract art came mainly in France from the Eurasian Paleolithic period less than 35,000 years ago." [BBC -10 January, 2002]
"The world's oldest example of abstract art, dating back more than 70,000 years, has been found in a cave in South Africa. Scientists say the discovery shows that modern ways of thinking developed far earlier than we think."
This discovery of art dating 70,000 BP indicates human ability to use a "precision grip", which enabled craftiness of all manner. One example is human development of stitched clothing, which has been shown, by DNA on lice, to have emerged at approximately the same 70,000 BP. During this same time period language and speech among modern humans became anatomically refined to essentially modern standards, as presented by Philip Lieberman and Robert McCarthy of the University of Pennsylvania, in their ground breaking paper "Tracking the Evolution of Language and Speech".
As Nicholas Wade [NY Times Science editor] wrote: "Once language started, whether in the form of word or gesture or both, its further evolution would doubtless have been rapid because of the great advantages that each improvement in this powerful faculty would have conferred on its possessors. Even while still in its most rudimentary form, language would have made possible a whole new level of social interactions. Precise and unambiguous thoughts could at last be shared among members of a community, whether for making alliances, indicating intention, describing people and places, or transmitting knowledge. Moreover each small improvement in the overall system, whether in precision of hearing or articulation or syntax formation, would further benefit, and the genes underlying the change would sweep through the population." [BEFORE THE DAWN - Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors]
Armed with language, dexterity, clothing and an increasing tool kit that included fire, the domestication of wolves into dogs, modern humans unknowingly adapted for their great migration . . . to inhabit and dominate the Earth. But before this great saga began "humanity came very close to extinction."
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Photos by Bob Kiger |
This interactive "Atlas of the Human Journey" illustrates the growing body of evidence from archaeology, genetics, physical anthropology, linguistics, neuroscience and other disciplines as they "recover the lost history of our ancestors".
Note: We believe that the contribution of hunter gatherer culture to language and technology has been greatly understated by the scientific community, who seem to emphasize agrarian culture as the turning point in human cultural affairs.
Metal Age
Artifacts and technologies from every land testify to the effectiveness of the Modern Human migration. We concentrate on those skills, behaviors, discoveries, crafts, arts and events that shaped the ever expanding horizons of Modern Humans as migration slowly led to development of agrarian settlements with unique identities. Technology in the form of refining of elemental ores promoted invention, art, and weaponry.
The Metal Age reached new heights with Sputnik
The spin-off of groups from hunter-gatherers into settled communities was dependent on availability of natural resources, trade, craft skills [and much more] that fundamentally reshaped the values of those Modern Humans who became early caretakers. In this age we see how the domestic lifestyle bifurcated the nature of Modern Humans. The concentrated culture of permanent settlements provided the context for rapid development.
The downside of permanent settlements was that they divided the groups left behind from the groups that moved on to "greener pastures". Over millennia this dividing of humanity led to entrenchment about every sort of belief systems. Dividing, while promoting diversity, also led to an age of constant warfare and alienation between humans of common ancestry.
Literacy Age
Proto-Canaanite alphabet reconstructed
Literacy is the earliest system by which knowledge and culture was widely dispersed
Scholars debate the earliest language with emphasis on written communication. We have little information on such writing before 10,000 BP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_system#History_of_writing_systems
 Gutenberg Press photo courtesy of Flickr Photo |
One recurring theme we see throughout the "Ages of Man" is the use of technology to speed the development of ideas into action. The development of the the printing press, led to the beginning of both the Renaissance and the Reformation. |
Industry Age
Coalbrookdale by Night, 1801, Philipp Jakob Loutherbourg the Younger
The theoretical basis for the Industry Age [like all Ages presented in this thesis] has deep roots in the knowledge accumulated from all prior ages. Finding a comprehensive line of contributors to this knowledge base has consumed the lifetimes of many thinkers. Here are some shortcuts:
The Age of Intelligent Machines: Chronology by Raymond Kurzwell Kurzwell's chronology, while largely centered upon the development of computing and artificial intelligence, provides a useful history of those thinkers, artists and inventors whose contributions lead to the Industry Age.
The widespread use of the term "Industrial Revolution" in contrast to our "Industry Age" connotes and documents the speed at which development and invention progressed after a core constituent of literate inventors built their "automata" based on the wisdom of the Ages.
Videography Age
WE CLAIM:
1. For as long as we can track language . . . Sanskrit > Greek> Latin the root "vid" meant more than merely seeing but "apprehending", "seeing the big picture", "knowing".
2. Video in it's now common usage (electronic or digital pictures) was dug up by TV pioneers, in the early 20th Century, to describe the picture, as opposed to the sound" portion of their new TV invention. In their near panic rush to become first into TV they set up "new slang". Sound was "audio" from the Latin "audire" (already quite entrenched in radio jargon) and picture became "video" from the Latin "videre".
3. Not much happened with "video" in common languages (world wide) between 1930-1946 because the Depression and World War II intervened, but after the war, TV technology exploded with unbelievable impact around the world. During this "cold war" period a new breed of nerd emerged in classrooms . . . the "audio-video" guy, who set up the slide projectors and movie projectors. From 1946 until the late 1960s video remained pretty much the purview of broadcast engineers and a few early video enthusiasts who braved great expense and frustration to pioneer in "video making".
4. Between 1947-1972 we have been advised of three published usages, without definition, of the word "videography".
5. During the post WW2 period some early film makers, including Sergei Eisenstein, began to connect the language of film and cognizance. Fulbright scholar, Sol Worth, professed that visual media were forms of communication that, while fundamentally different from speech, could and must be seriously examined as ways by which human beings create and share meanings. Worth used "videme" as a term of art for the "shot" as a basic unit of visual communication . . . but did use the word "videography".
6. By the late 1960s Norelco introduced the first "portable" broadcast video camera [please correct us if there is an earlier portable] the PCP-90. It caused an immediate sensation in the field of independent broadcasting and companies like "Compact Video" "Trans-American Video" "Editel" began building small Mobile Units to house the camera and the Ampex 3000 recorders that usually were mated to it. The smallest of these mobile units was on a golf cart, and their was a jeep, and larger units.
7. In 1971 Bob Kiger was commissioned by Herb Lightman, editor of the official journal of "The American Society of Cinematographers" [ASC] to research and write a report on the emerging electronic cameras and recording technologies. While browsing through the ASC museum Kiger noticed a picture of the original Thomas Edison "Vitagraph" company. He decided if Edison could concoct "vitagraph" than why shouldn't his video report be called "videography" and so in October 1972 "Videography. What Does It All Mean?" was the cover story of American Cinematographer magazine.
8. Within months of the release of "Videography. What Does It All Mean?" broadcasters and video makers around the world adopted "videography". We contend that widespread use of "videography" made the "video" ubiquitous and [we believe] widely misunderstood.
9 Bob Kiger's research into the roots of "video" only began with the publication of "Videography. What Does It All Mean?" By 1988 he published a treatise on the historical and deeper meaning of "video" and "videography" and distributed it to dictionaries and academics around the world. See: http://videographyblog.com/background/Websters%20%26%20Oxford%20Letters.pdf
10. Websters and Oxford seem to have forgotten their commitment to lexicography because 20 years have passed and we are still waiting for proper etymology of "video" and "videography".
11. Failure to research the roots of "video" and naively accept it into pop vernacular has been a primary influence to the "dumbing down" of each and every one of us in "the age of videography" [Miller Freeman Publishers - 1996]
12. Post Modern Humans gain context by understanding the wisdom compiled over the "Ages of Man", which, we claim, is expressed by the primal root "vid".
It is clear that the pace of understanding of knowledge is growing at an exponential pace during the current Videography Age. Global collaboration through digital information sharing is enabling discoveries that would have been classified as "science fiction" in the Literacy Age [20 years ago].
From the outset of the videography age, broadcasters have failed miserably in their ability to tap into the higher values of their audiences. NBC journalist John Hockenberry provides a news insiders viewpoint on why this occurs.
There is growing concern that the popularity of video on the internet may slow down traffic to a near halt in the years to come. The fate of the information superhighway share the fate of many/most automotive highway systems. Endless gridlock!
Here's "The Futurist" Top Ten Predictions for 2008.
? Age
Thanks to friends of vid for finding this
Having just begun the videography age we can only hypothesize that the next "age of man" will involve inter-dimensional control. Consider for example the Theory of Everything or Turning Vivid Dreams into Reality
We invite review and critique on the "ages of man".
THE "AGES OF MAN" HYPOTHESIS IS IN CONSTANT DEVELOPMENT
videography ©® Bob Kiger 1972-2008 | VID ® WGA-Bob Kiger 1999-2008