An odd thought occurred to me while I was reading CT's "Help Me Save My Soul" thread. Bear with me.
When someone takes a photograph of you (a film photo, not a digital photo), what they are actually doing is exposing a piece of chemical-coated film to light. The light to which the film is exposed is composed, as all light is, of photons. These photons were initially emitted by a light source, for example, the sun or a lightbulb. From the light source, they then encountered you. Photons of certain energies were absorbed by you, while others bounced off of you. It is the photons that bounced that later met up with the film. When these photons meet the film, they are absorbed by the chemicals on the film, which then undergo a chemical change which, when the film is developed, causes that portion of the film to become a certain color, which is dependant on the amount of energy in each photon. So what's being captured on film is the energy of the photons that have bounced off of you.
But what about digital photography? In a digital camera there is no film. Instead, there is a layer of photosensitive material that is connected to an electric circuit. By measuring the changes in voltage across each piece of the detector, you can determine how much energy the photons hitting it had, and therefore what color should be displayed. There's a fundamental difference here; the light energy is captured by an electrical process, not a chemical one. Does that mean that digital cameras and film cameras have different soul-stealing properties?
Even more importantly, what about the human eye? When you look at a person, some of the photons that have bounced off of that person are hitting your retina. When these photons hit your retina, they cause a physical (chemical?) change in certain specialized cells there. These changes are reported to your brain and interpreted as color or intensity. But it's kind of similar to what's happening with a camera; light is causing a measurable change on the incident medium. So does that mean that every time someone looks at us they are stealing our souls? Is the whole world populated by soulless ghouls?
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
It just means that you're a big fat nerd.
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
quote:Does that mean that digital cameras and film cameras have different soul-stealing properties?
No.
Posted by Christy (Member # 4397) on :
But, then, wouldn't your soul be replentished by the new photons that are hitting you? So, only with a limited supply of photons, or on a photonless day would your soul actually be depleted.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
UNFAIR.
Nowhere in his technical description is there any clue to his weight.
You are combining the physical and the magical so you get a bit confused.
The film or electronic medium steals your image. The process by which that image is stolen is immaterial. The fact is that there is an image, and according to magic theory, the image is liked to the reality.
They human eye also takes an image, but it erases it quickly. Your soul cannot be captured in the eye of a living person because it releases it when it looks elsewhere.
(And while the image may be captured in the human brain, the memory is such a seive that the soul can escape out of it).
It is only through creating a semi-permanent (what is permanent?) image of a person that you capture part of their soul.
And the evil you can do with it?
Picture two parallel lines of technological advancement.
1) Biometrics--using ones appearance as a computer aided form of identification.
2) Identity theft--one of the most lucrative and fastest growing crimes.
How long into our future will it be before someone can steal your image with a photo, and manimpulate it so that they steal your identity. Isn't that close to having a photograph steal your soul?
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
I must have a lot of souls residing in my CF card.
*blink*
So what happens when I reformat the card?!
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
All those souls will be diced to tiny bits....er bytes....
Posted by saxon75 (Member # 4589) on :
quote:And while the image may be captured in the human brain, the memory is such a seive that the soul can escape out of it.
Actually, according to what I learned in intro psych, memory is not a sieve. If data makes it into long term memory, it's always there. When you forget something, it's because you lost the index, not the data. That is, you still know it, you just don't know where to find it. So as long as it gets into your long term memory, an image captured in the human brain would seem to qualify as "semi-permanent."
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
But is that really true? (Cue John L's entry into thread -- in a parallel universe.) I don't think we can remember images in as great detail as you'd expect from a photograph. We can consciously (or even subconsciously) remember details of the image and reconstruct what it should look like by reasoning about it, but that's not quite the same thing (think algorithmic data storage versus bitmapping). Maybe my difficulty with this notion stems from the fact that images so rarely make their way into long-term memory entire.
That said, Dan_raven has a really good point. Magic is real. Maybe moreso now than it ever was in the times when mystical beliefs were more prevalent.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
Does one ever run out of soul?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
One of my pet theories (for fiction) has always been that only instant Polaroid photos can be used in mystical activities, because only Polaroids have the imprint directly from photons which have struck the subject of the photo. Although I guess negatives could work as well, as long as the color shift didn't mess with the spell.
I've also theorized that digital capture of neither sound nor pictures can ever be used as components in mystical activities, because digital captures have broken the original source into discrete bits and destroyed the continuity of the original. So a scratchy LP or reel-to-reel tape recording is better than a crystal-clear CD or DVD recording for spell-casting purposes. A scanned image of a glyph can't transfer mystical energy, but a rubbing or Polaroid might.
If the Professor in Evil Dead had been dictating his notes into his computer, Ash wouldn't have ended up going back in time.
Dagonee
Posted by cochick (Member # 6167) on :
I am amazed at how many of you have actually spent time thinking about this before. I thought I did strange things in my spare time.
Having said that I really enjoyed reading this thread and liked Saxon75's explanations - concise and clear - I'd never understood how it worked before.
P.S. No-one's ever taking my picture again.
Posted by cochick (Member # 6167) on :
Just a thought - what's the principle behind video camera's - bearing in mind that CTV cameras are everywhere these days?
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
What if it turns out that having your picture taken unencumbers your soul, and that people who have pictures of them where people can see them are the ones collecting the souls? Hence why Catherine Zeta-Jones just gets younger all the time?
Posted by peter the bookie (Member # 3270) on :
hey, saxy, did you get my email?
*is starting to get paranoid about email having gotten no response to anything she's sent in the last 3 days*
Posted by saxon75 (Member # 4589) on :
I got it, I just didn't know how to respond to it.
Posted by peter the bookie (Member # 3270) on :