One Cool Technology Breakthrough Would Be...

...downloading one's mental images onto a storage device. Because let me tell you, there is no way a camera could have captured the things I saw or the way I saw them while going for a 5-mile jog along the Hudson yesterday.

It was 5:30pm, about 80 degrees and humid with the sun dropping in the sky over the river. I'm running north up the Hudson River Park, past the Horatio Street water park, past the heliport at 30th Street and past the Circle Line up around 42nd Street. People using all manner of wheels - bikes, blades, pedicabs, scooters, etc. - to either get exercise or to simply enjoy the summer-in-October weather. Joggers of every size, shape and level pounding the pavement and visibly enjoying a good cathartic sweat. The helicopters taking off and landing, their rotors and shiny painted bodies reflecting the setting sun. The sunlight beating through a chain-link fence at a low angle, causing my eyes to perceive a stream of choppy images akin to a cartoon reel in the 1920s.

On my return running south, I passed a newly-married couple, beaming and beautifully dressed, surrounded by their wedding party, taking some photos by 12th Street. I also saw countless 5-10 year old kids rollerblading with a parent (I had no idea that so many kids this young bladed!) down by the Christopher Street pier. Hordes of people simply chilling out and basking in the late afternoon sun, either taking a little nap, reading the paper or chatting with friends or family members. I also noticed the building traffic on the West Side Highway, as a new Saturday night in NYC and the promise of a great time was upon us.

In short, my run was a collage of sights, mental pictures that those sights evoked and a host of other sensory experiences that sit in my brain, waiting to be accessed from memory by some future experience. But wouldn't it be cool if I could at least take the images and be able to view them externally, share them with friends and catalog them as part of my photo archive? I think so. So consider this a challenge for someone far smarter than me to come up with a solution. Because I think there would be a pretty big and profitable market for this technology. Except the camera makers might not be too happy. This would be a disruptive technology, to say the least!

Comments

[Roger]

you said it, brotha. when damon hit that blast i said "it's gonna be all right." then when cano cleared the bases with a little help from trot nixon, it got just that much better. thanks for pushing me today. i need some more roadwork!

[Rich]

and another good run today, Roger - it was fun.
As is watching the Yanks climb off the matt tonight.