Pangea – and Generation Image

“We’re trying to find out how all this works….it doesn’t matter whether we live or die. The important thing is that the work go on”

Source: NY Times (2/18/15)

The New York Times has a wonderful “Op-Docs” feature, a digital animation version of a traditional Op-Ed and a documentary.

Today’s Op-Doc “Pangea”really moved me – it tells the story of polar explorer and scientist Alfred Wegener

The animation and storyline have a sort of enchanting beauty and feel of the “Polar Express”, a superb book I read my young children many times. I strongly recommend you watch the whole thing here.

It is poignant in it’s depiction of a man’s brave and selfless scientific quest (see the quote above).

It managed to convey an inspiring message from another time – almost ancient in its timeless dignity, a compelling contrast with our time of immediate, crass, self-absorbed, individualism and careerism.

And it was interesting and informative on the history of the science of plate tectonics.

The screenshot above is the highlight, where, during a failed expedition, with his companions on the verge of giving up, he inspired his crew with an appeal to wonder and a timeless scientific mission:

At twilight, he said “Let’s go for a walk”

He took them out, and pointed to the ice and the sky, and said: “We’re trying to find out how all this works….it doesn’t matter whether we live or die. The important thing is that the work go on.”

He later died on that expedition. He died an outsider and unrecognized for his ideas, which were rejected by the disciplinary “experts”.

But, one of the things I found most interesting was the (unintentionally) ironic introductory advertisement by Nikon.

Nikon celebrated “Generation Image”.

Many have written about the implications of the decline of literacy and the ascendance of visual culture.

To see a celebration of “Generation Image” juxtaposed with the story of a questing scientist – reflecting values as far from a “selfie” as you could get – led me to think that the more significant “tectonic” shift was not “plate tectonics”, but the shift from a literary to a visual culture.

Something to think about.