Old Meets the New: why, hello there old! and how are you new?
So this is a photo of a 19th century fort in a place called Umm Salal Mohammed in Qatar. I love how it epitomizes a stark but peaceful collision of the old and the new with the satellite dishes in the foreground. It’s a well captured photograph at summarizing the immense and rapid change in the Middle East, especially with the onslaught of modernization in light of recent demands for oil production. Even in the most remote of areas, a T.V. is showing those who had been isolated, something of the world “out there”. People no longer have to travel long distances to be exposed to different aspects of the world and its diversity. Just arrange the antennae or give the dish a little nudge, and flip the channel! While some may see the satellite dishes as a symbol of progress and modernization for the better, others may see an ancient artifact and place of history and culture being desecrated with “Western” influence. The biggest challenge, I believe in our time, is the challenge of finding an equilibrium or point of agreement where both tradition and progressive modernization can meet.
photo courtesy of Jungle_Boy (http://flickr.com/photos/jungle_boy/)
thanks whoever you are. Tarzan.
Uncategorized | Comments (3)3 Responses to “Old Meets the New: why, hello there old! and how are you new?”
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I really like this picture. I think it’s really cool, and I definitely agree that it epitomizes globalization.
I like this picture a lot. -No I don’t like globalization, but I think this is a great picture that shows what it is/how it’s affecting the world. Nice job.
This is actually a very interesting picture. It reminds me of when I was in Egypt and there were glass Coca-Cola bottles lying all around the pyramids. It was kind of surreal seeing something so ancient mixed in with familiar elements of the present. Towards the end of your caption you mentioned how some people would view an image like this as a “desecration” of the past. I can completely agree with them on that because aesthetically the dishes are kind of a buzzkill. Functionally, however, imagine what signals those dishes could be sending…possibly images of the great architecture to other parts of the world? Maybe. Anyway this is such a great visual aid to globalization in action!