Video is a relatively new medium. Depending on how you draw the lines, the first writing systems were established around 6,000 years ago and the origin of painting can be traced back at least 45,500 years. If visual art was your Grandmother, 100 years old and going strong, film is like your nephew who can’t even crawl yet. Let’s lie next to him on the carpet for a while. Don’t forget to smile; babies like when you smile.

We typically think of the future as having ‘not happened yet,’ where the past has ‘happened already’ and the present is ‘happening now.’ Instead let’s imagine for a moment that your life is a movie I have on video. When I press ‘play’ that is the time going. It’s playing as you read this. I can see you now, looking at your screen, reading these words. You look very nice today. I need to go get a snack so I’m going to pause you for a moment, okay? There, did you notice? The answer is no, you didn’t, because I paused the whole world you occupy so there was nothing to notice. You have no idea if you were paused for a few minutes or a million years because in your world, no time has passed at all. I know it’s weird but don’t worry, I won’t let anything bad happen to you. Now I’m going to do something even weirder, okay? I’m going to rewind you. There, did you notice? Well, I have a confession to make, I’ve actually been rewinding you this whole time. I’m sorry, I know it was a mean trick, I’m just trying to show you something. See how time still feels like it’s moving the same direction? If I pause the movie again and we look inside your brain you’ll see that’s because no matter which frame I stop on, you always have memories of the ‘past’ and not the ‘future.’ This is true even though now that I’m rewinding you, the future has already happened and the past is yet to come. For your peace of mind I’ll set you right again but I hope now you see it doesn’t make much of a difference for your experience of things.

Well, that was fun. We’re back in real life now. Arrival is a good movie to watch if you like that sort of thing. I won’t go too far into the physics because we’re supposed to be talking about film here but that was a Newtonian model of a principle that also works in our quantum universe. I’d love to get into that with you later. I think your nephew is getting bored, maybe try playing peek-a-boo with him?

Since the spread of the internet there has been a rapid increase in our amount of available information, safe to say we are still getting used to it. It is easy to imagine that this information will last forever because right now we are flooded with it. Remember that as we continue the hungry search for technological innovation, these methods of collecting and storing data will become defunct as they have done so many times. Because the medium of video is so new, it is not yet revered for its ability to convey data across generations the way books are. The stink of new lowbrow art – efficiency rotting our brains – has not fully dissipated. It will, in time, as we come back to ourselves. Don’t you get bored of living without all 11+ senses? I bet your kids will. 

Our eras’ surviving videos will be cherished as sacred beginnings akin to the hand stencils blown into cave walls, before composition, before line. The chances we have yet made videos that will stand as the great works of humankind are incredibly slim. The Bible is currently the most read book of all time with over 5 billion copies distributed over roughly 40 generations since it was written. Imagine the impact if they had been able to film the events as they were happening. Now we can do it. We have been doing a good job recording and now we have what we need to do it better. I know we have a lot to sort out but please, get the important stuff on video. Wink at the security cameras, they are your children’s children’s children. That may be all they have of you. Don’t let our lives be lost in the wind. By the time we get to our film ‘Bible’ things will have changed a great deal; it may be formally unrecognizable to any of our great books. I know it will be something lovely and terrible and original and it will speak to something in us older than time. Let’s focus on getting there without blowing each other up :)