People Who Lived Not That Long Ago in Photos

I forgot to put the link in - a reader reminded me just now. It's corrected now.

Check out all of these - they've been 'colorized' from the original black & white. The last one surprised me - I hadn't realized that Ali had known Malcolm X.

Those from around the turn of the century - late 1800s to early 1900s - caused me to re-think just how short a time it's been since the Modern Age had begun. Hard to think of Claude Monet's paintings having preceded color photos - his paintings were so filled with color, that I never realized just how important the museums were in helping people to understand the power of his work. In black & white photographs, it just wouldn't have been the same.

I remember when my husband and I didn't have a color TV. We had moved just before the birth of our second child. Our TV died, and my dad gave us a portable black & white. We used that for several years, until we had more money.

That was the first time I realized the power of color. Without it, TV was kind of boring. I would watch a show, then turn it off. We didn't sink into hours of mindless zoning out.

The current technology of modern high-definition TVs is similar. It's so nearly the same as real life, that it's each to get sucked into the experience, and ignore the real world. I would be surprised if it wasn't a major cause of societal transformation.

Wait until the full 3-D experience comes to our homes. We might never interact with living beings again.