Time travel

It seems amazing to me that I was born only 13 years after this picture was taken, it simply looks like a different world to me, a kind of fiction only existing in films. It shows Shaftesbury avenue from Piccadilly circus (London) and was taken some time in 1949.

Perhaps the reason for the dissonance is that change is difficult to perceive if it is slow and gradual, like the proverbial frog that doesn't jump from the pan of water if it is heated gently, i.e. we only notice things when presented with big jumps or all of the changes all at once. Sometimes I suspect that this means we don't pay anywhere near enough attention to or make the most of the small changes in our lives. The myriad micro-optimizations that aggregate to make our appearance, habits, surroundings and perhaps even attitudes almost unrecognizable to visitors from the past (via physical separation) or the future, via time travel through the proxy of a photograph like this one.

Funny thing time.