From concerns over blue light to digital strain and dryness, headlines today often worry how smartphones and computer screens might be affecting the health of our eyes. But while the technology may be new, this concern certainly isn’t. Since Victorian times people have been concerned about how new innovations might damage eyesight.
In the 1800s, the rise of mass print was both blamed for an increase in eye problems and was responsible for dramatizing the fallibility of vision too. As the number of known eye problems increased, the Victorians predicted that without appropriate care and attention Britain’s population would become blind. In 1884, an article in The Morning Post newspaper proposed that: “The culture of the eyes and efforts to improve the faculty of seeing must become matters of attentive consideration and practice, unless the deterioration is to continue and future generations are to grope about the world purblind”. (1)
At the end, we didn’t become blind with the books.
And we will probably not become blind with iPads as well.
But could it be that we are looking into the wrong direction for problems?
The issue with more and more information is not that is causes blindness. But that it opens the eyes. And the more your eyes are open to see things, the more you lose touch with the things which cannot be seen at all. And the latter are the ones which are important. And you need to close your eyes to see them.
At the end, we will keep on reading.
At the end, we will know everything.
And with new technologies we will see anything.
We will be so excited about our knowledge!
So happy for our newly found wisdom!
That we will miss our unhappy (self) children next to us.
Trying to catch our attention to their new play.
Daddy!
Daddy!
Look!
Not now kid. I am discovering the universe!
Daddy…
Daddy…
Look…
The universe is passing right by you…
Daddy!
WHAT?!!?
(I love you…)
Floating into the abyss.
A teardrop…
We believe we can come up to the surface.
Without knowing that we are already home…