The world is flat

I spent today in the Museum of Natural History, taking a wonderful Smithsonian class on digital cameras. Like most gizmos of the computerized age, these devices are amazing little universes in which it is easy to get lost. Fortunately, teacher Eliot Cohen, was a terrific and inspiring guide.

What I was thinking about as I walked home on a crystalline May evening, however, was my fellow students. We were homogenous in some obvious respects: all white, all middle-ished aged, all probably on the affluent side (the fact that we have the leisure and the money to pursue digital photography is a dead giveaway).

But we were pretty disparate in terms of our experience and interests. On the semi-professional end of things, there was me, a journalist trying to extend my half-life in an increasingly multi-media field, and a fellow who has a small photography business that he's taking digital. There were some pretty serious hobbyists: people who have gone on photo safaris and who have expensive digital SLRs and know all about the editing software. And then there were a couple of folks who hadn't yet gotten up the nerve to take their new digital cameras out of the box.

The interesting part was how much I learned from EVERYONE. I have a very primitive digital camera and am thinking about upgrading, and I got as much good advice from the shutterbugs as I did from the more expert photographers. In some ways, the amateurs' advice was better because it was more practical.

It was a great example of the kind of shared expertise Internet mavens like to celebrate. And it did give me a sense of how much creativity and good advice is available out there. The rapid changes in techology have had a great democratizing effect: Forget the high priests of culture; there's much wisdom to be gained in the pews. The turmoil and tumult of our technological revolution can be painfully dislocating. But it also lets all of us start over again and view the world with beginners' eyes. That can be liberating.