A story was told of a lass who had lived in a remote village. She had no access to television, newspapers, or magazines. She had only a radio to listen to. It was the family radio. There was no electricity in their village. So her mother made sure to supply dry cell batteries to the transistor radio. The transistor radio was a possession so dear to the whole family. The family gathered around it, especially in the evenings when everyone had returned from their various day’s activities. It was a veritable source of information about the goings-on in society beyond their tranquil village. In no small measure, it also provided a good dose of entertainment – music, comic relief, etc. It was an active agency for socialization, offering them a window to perceive how cities, towns, and societies beyond theirs functioned. It prepared them, without intentionally meaning to, for the eventual migration to the city in later years.
Radio stations did not run for twenty hours in those days as they do now. Radio stations come alive by about 5:30 AM and shut down for the day by about 11 AM. There were not many of them either. Radio stations were owned and operated by various governments – both state and federal levels. As a result, there were only two or three stations, at most, to listen to.
During a certain holiday period, the young girl visited her elder brother in the city. The brother had a modest television set for that time. It was a cathode-ray-tube television. It was very bulky. Typical of cathode-ray-tube television technology was protruding and tapering towards the back. There were no flat-screen televisions like there are today. She was intrigued that, unlike the radio, she could also see the people talking. At the same time, she was perplexed that the image of the person talking could be manipulated to represent someone else. While she did not know how, she had the odd feeling that if an image could be made to come alive on television, then that image could be manipulated in any way the handlers wanted. When she wanted to talk about her thoughts to her brother, he dismissed it as impossible. He joked that she should just watch television and enjoy it and stop wondering about what will never be possible. Those were the days of analog televisions. There were not many possibilities for image and video editing.
Fast forward to a couple of decades later. Somewhat this lass from the village was right. In today’s digital technologies boom, there is a preponderance of possibilities to edit images and videos. Images and videos can be incredibly altered, unrelated videos can be stitched up together to appear as one even series of activities, etc. She had a forethought of digital technologies that were at various stages of incubation, at the time. The computers, which she knew nothing about and which bedrock technology is digital, had just begun to be popular. Personal Computers had just begun to make their way to various homes.
Today, the brother who had told this story was quite concerned about what could have happened if he had not discouraged her sister out of that imagination. Her sister’s imagination was not unattainable after all. she wondered what genius she was and particularly what else she could have turned out to become had he supported and validated her.
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