Picture Picture

I remember sometime in 2001 when my blockmate bought her first Sony digicam, it costs around 50,00o at that time and it's the kind which you have to put in a 1.44 micro floppy disc. At that time it was the coolest gadget I ever saw. Then came the influx of the cheap and high megapixel digicams you use to picture-picture with your friends.

Yesterday I met with another blockmate who is realizing his dream of becoming a chemist in Mapua. His polsci degree was not enough he said. According to him his younger classmates would use a digicam to take pictures of the whiteboard notes of the professors. I asked if his classmates would study the pictures and he said he didn't know. Apparently he believed more in the (now) old-fashioned taking down notes with pen and paper, he said it helped him more, especially with equations.

I discussed this phenomenon of using digicams to "take down" notes with my (now) older friends and they said that there are software to convert these pictures to text and there are even whiteboards that you can write on which can put out print outs or digital copies of whatever is written on the board. Of course there's the copying of powerpoint lectures but the taking of pictures to me was something new. I now imagine a picture of a whiteboard full of equations spliced between pictures of friends hanging around in Intramuros.

The technology changes, and it affects not merely what we know but how we learn. I sure can't imagine studying notes which are pictures on an lcd screen. Perhaps I need a Kindle.