Vision past, vision future: San Francisco 1906.

What struck me about this video….


(Via Car Lust, via Instapundit)

…was the way that people kept apparently stopping to stare at the viewer. It puzzled me, until I realized that they were staring at the motion picture camera, which of course in 1906 was this marvelous new technological wonder that promised to change the world… and didn’t it, just? We’re just so used to the effects now that we don’t really contemplate what it’s like to have a history that can be replayed and re-experienced…