Yesterday morning my desktop computer was dead in the water.

Well, turns out that my Intel Mac had a bad graphics card.  Well, maybe not, it might be the latest version of OS X that found issues with the card, or the card had issues with OS X.  Who knows.  But, bottom line, after installing a different card, the system is working. 

The lesson of all this is that technology is getting very difficult to understand and manage.  And, I believe, it won’t get better in the future.  It is just too complex for mortals like myself.  All I can do is try different things until the problem is solved.  No one can unravel the mystery of what systems do.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with photography.  Photography is my love.

The Gillie’s Boat at Loch Stack

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I love it because sometimes I meet neat people in my wanderings.  Like Mac, who owns the boat.  And who, in the early morning, offered me a shot of Dalwhinnie single malt scotch, to toast the morning and take off the chill of the air.  This is what life is about, it is not about fixing computers.

It is about finding stuff.  Like these two gannets engaged in a courtship ritual that no human can understand.

Gannet Love

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And it is about being at a spot when something really neat happens, something totally unexpected and unique.  Like when this American Bison decided to dust in front of an American icon scene at the Grand Tetons National Park.

Bison and Barn

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But wait a minute!

Just a few strokes on my keyboard and I took you from northern Scotland to Wyoming!  When I think about this, it is utterly astonishing.  Just a few short years ago, to accomplish something like this would have meant publishing a book or magazine.  But even with that, it would have meant getting it to you through some incredibly difficult publishing process and sale.  Now it is here free for you to see.  All because of a complex system sitting on my desk hooked up to a wire that goes somewhere to another computer and another and another.

And not only that, the stuff you see here can be viewed wirelessly on your cellphone.  My gosh, how we communicate has changed.

I can take you to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands in a half-second.

Iguanas on Rock

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Or, I can bounce up to Zephyrhills, Florida, and show you a flower in a friend’s backyard.

Blades

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Or we can go visit South Africa and look at a young hyena in the morning sun.

Young Hyena

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What is interesting about all this to me is the fact that the current younger generation thinks nothing of the technology.  It is my generation that finds this stuff so fascinating.  Although, I must tell you that even though I have a Twitter account, I still don’t get it.  Nor do I understand the magic of text messaging.  Why not talk to somebody?  Why not enjoy hearing some great stories by a new found friend in Scotland on a chilly morning?

I suppose the whole idea here is that the new age of communication is taking on forms that we never imagined just a few short years ago.  And I wonder where it will go next?  Perhaps it is about immediacy, the now, the urgent need to reach out across the globe or even to the stars instantly.

I just wish I was smart enough to figure out what the next Face Book step is.  But, unfortunately, I am still wedded to the past and the sweeping images that I enjoyed viewing in the National Geographic magazines that my father received each month.  I hope there is still a place for that sort of thing.

And I pray that too, in our attempts to join up in the instant messages, that we don’t forget that the real treasures in our life are the people we enjoy knowing in person, not across some complex computer network that few of us can ever hope to understand.