But what if we could see the world more clearly and better anticipate what is to come in the New Year?
As award-winning documentary filmmaker Lois Farfel Stark suggests, one way to balance the rapid changes of our technological era is shape: a key that reveal patterns of the past and helps us glimpse the future.
This is the focus her new book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times.
One example is the shape of the Big Dipper. To the Greeks and Native Americans, these same stars formed a great bear. In Medieval times these dots connected to draw a wagon. To the Chinese, they made up a heavenly goddess. Each culture saw the same set of stars but connected the dots in their own way to form a familiar shape that reflected their worldview.
If we were connecting the dots of the constellation today, perhaps we would draw a laptop computer. As Stark suggests, “The stars do not move—we change our description of them. How we describe the world inscribes our thinking.”
The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times reveals the powerful role shapes and patterns play in forming how humans think. As the New Year approaches, perhaps the secret to seeing ahead of our time is to see our current world with new eyes.
