Today in class we focused on differences in perspective between modern day and in the late  1800’s – early 1900’s. We watched a short film in class that was made in 1903 I believe, called ‘Life of a Fireman”? “A Fireman’s Life”? Something about a Fireman. We analyzed how filming and storytelling style in the movie differs from our modern-day styles, and what this reveals about our differing cultural perspectives with the advent of technology. In the Fireman movie, the scenes are long, continuous, and extremely focused on narrative action, while the camera doesn’t pan around at all during or between the scenes. It stays completely still and in one perspective during each long scene of action. Why film this way? Why don’t we film professional movies this way anymore? And what does this tell us about differing mindsets between now and the time the film was shot? We contrasted this movie with a scene from a famously realistic movie, “Saving Private Ryan”, and found that the way in which the perspective in “Saving Private Ryan” jumps from flying in the air like a bird, to being Tom Hanks, to being Tom Hank’s friend, to being in the water itself is not actually as “realistic” as it claims to be. It does give a sense of realism, we have at least a few different shots from the view of the characters, but no real person who was watching the historical event the scene was based on could’ve jumped from all those different perspectives, and especially not in the span of a minute. While in the Fireman movie, our perspective was consistently that of a bystander to the action, an actually realistic perspective. So why do modern viewers see “Saving Private Ryan” as the more realistic movie, and the other one as dated and fake-looking? This illustrates one of Carr’s main points in The Shallows, have we simply adapted our minds to be more familiarized and used to the technology we’ve been exposed to? And what does that say about us as a society, that we view the impossible scenario as more realistic than the natural scenario? What does that say about the influence of technology?