<Old technology never dies, it just fades away. Into cool rubble.

I photograph modern ruins because I find it disturbing to find familiar objects and technology to be abandoned. I'm reminded that nothing is permanent, that everything is always in a state of transition. And we see ourselves in our own transitions, sometimes too focused on where we're going to notice and appreciate where we are.

--Phillip Buehler

Or, where we've been

Modern Ruins is the site of photographer Phillip Buehler. I share his fascination with old tech left to rot, with the elephant's graveyards of progress. If you went to the 1964 New York World's Fair (as Buehler had as a kid), you'll find its old and current state portrayed here. Ditto, Ellis Island, Coney Island, old NASA launch sites, factories, aircraft graveyards etc.

Any fans of James Burke's Connections series (The original 10-parter is the ONLY one to watch) will remember the episode Countdown. As a prologue to the next and final episode, it ends with a poignant tour of the old Apollo launch site. Besides the then uncommon use of Carmina Burina as a sound bed (it was made in 1978), the writer walks through all the blow-torched and scrapped gantrys and left overs from that prodigious, exciting time as he asks an interesting question.

To paraphrase, Once the excitement of new ventures like the space program--or any venture, for that matter--winds down, what happens to the knowledge and lessons of what we've passed through and achieved?

I loved that question when I heard it as a 16-year old and it's been a driver for me ever since. Does a culture and a system where obsolescence is accelerated by a stuctural, economic neccessity for "new and improved" leave us with a gap in our cultural memory? Does this willful gap cause us to miss ideas and opportunities that are latent or right under our nose? Do we get unnecessarily spooked into reactive and possibly destrucutive gestures when the "old" is presented as new and threatening? Perhaps the cult of the new ignores the contributions of the past, to all our detriment.

Imagine the foreshortened way we regard events today. The Walmart question, discussed elsewhere on this site, seems for many a New problem. Yet, anyone with a historical memory recalls a collossus like once-great Sears dwarfing it's next 5 competitiors combined. Or an A&P, similarly huge and scary, now an also ran. Or, take the challenges of war or political candidacies: each event or individual tracks remarkably with situations or people of the past, yet we're shocked, shocked when we "find there's gambling going on here."

Things like media coverage of Iraq or Michael Jackson or Laci Peterson or Elizabeth Smart cause seemingly well-informed people to shake their heads and lament the decline of culure or modern media. The only problem is, this conclusion ignores the fact of say, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, or The Lindbergh Trial, or the Donner Party or whatever. The latter, about national security, kidnapping and death of an infant, and mass cannibalism and family tragedy were media supernova of their time. Papers couldn't print updates fast enough and people could speak of nothing else. Speculation and presumptions of guilt or innocence ran rampant. People spoke out of the top of their hats just to be saying something. Jibber-jabber. Just like, oh, I dunno NYT, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, Rush/Talk-Radio et al do today.

Non-warranteed certitude is not a new product. That's just the way people are. Stories, archetypal stories, engage the mind like no other. Their mythical character and plot make them appeal to huge segments of people, but their conclusions and lessons can vary wildly in some cases because each is treated as a new lesson, not a repeat and an enhancement. And in this kind of a-historical context, we struggle wildy for meaning and understanding.

The result?

"I abolutely, positively have an opinion on this, that or the other. Just don't ask me 'why'"?

As Phillip sagely notes above, we're sometimes too focused on where we're going to notice and appreciate where we are. Indeed. Or, how we got here.

[1-25-05 updated]