The fallacy of photography and how touch screens are reshaping reality
Digital technologies are forcing a reassessment of the photographic image and our belief in the realities it represents. For many who have relied on the forensic qualities and documentary honesty of the photograph, it is a moment of profound concern as our attention is flooded with images of unknown veracity, casting a shadow of doubt across the entire visual environment.
This essay explores an aspect of the new visual environment that sits in full view at the heart of the digital revolution, yet which remains largely unscrutinized.
THE INTERACTIVE SCREEN is a new frontier with surprising emergent properties that require us to rethink the boundary between our minds and the world we inhabit: on the interactive screen, we are witnessing the emergence of a new form of consciousness. As such, the key question of the moment might not be about the credibility of facts and might be more about reaching a new understanding of how we structure knowledge. I suggest that the search for factual accuracy in photographic images might be a distraction that is holding us back from reaching a deeper understanding of the reality around us.
THE FALLACY OF PHOTOGRAPHY
The mechanical camera has always been a tool of the imagination, used to visualize faraway places, create memories and to dream about possibilities. Photographic images offer a peculiar mix of fact and fantasy, using an imprint of reality to feed our imagination from which we construct known truths about the world as surely as if we were present when the picture was made. To achieve this, light is refracted through glass and subjected to complex chemical or algorithmic processes before being reformatted as an image. Despite the absent subjects and the convoluted process of reproduction, we somehow accept these mechanical productions as credible substitutes for personal experience. We allow two-dimensional representations to shape our knowledge of the three-dimensional world, and we use imagery to share reality in many ways, from forensic to fanciful; we trust photography to deliver depths of explorable detail, while simultaneously embracing its emotional abstractions.
This is the mystery of the photographic image that is simultaneously evidential and fantastical: it can deliver knowledge of things we haven’t seen and create memories of moments we haven’t lived. The emergent property that distinguishes photography from other visual media is the mechanically induced belief that we are witnessing a fragment of the world which, even as we look at it, we know no longer exists. Maybe since the first artists imprinted their palms onto immutable rock, people have yearned for an alchemy that renders the ephemeral as permanent. Photography quickly embedded itself in culture as a factual extraction from the real world, presenting moments of time frozen for study and reflection. Whether driven by magic, mysticism, faith, or science, photographic imagery derives its power from our willingness to believe, and photography pulls meaning from reality in a way that makes its visual figments almost tangible.
It’s taken 190 years to achieve this shared cultural understanding of the photographic image[i] and we have learned to be comfortable with the dissonant combination of fact and fantasy that we find in every photograph. From the time of its invention, factual believability was the defining feature of photography, and the cultural norm that accepted pictures as representations of truth was firmly established by the start of the 20th Century. This is the fallacy of photography, and although we recognised that the camera could tell untruths, we chose to embrace the fallacy as we settled into an uneasy belief in the photographic image. This culture of belief is a dangerous precedent for the technological changes that are overtaking society in the 21st Century, as the technology of mechanised vision is changing faster than our ability to understand it.
We are witnessing a paradigm shift as digital processes reveal new qualities that transcend our understanding of photography
The adoption of new technologies is a muddled process that recurs in every age of invention. We have little option but to run into the unfamiliar future while looking backwards for reassurance from our more familiar past. For example, we know now that railways are not iron horses and that automobiles are much more than horseless carriages. We also understand that the camera isn’t a pencil, although it’s easy to understand why photography was initially described as “photogenic drawing”[ii] and why, in 1844, Henry Fox-Talbot named the world’s first photographic book “The Pencil Of Nature”.
Today, we are witnessing another paradigm shift as digital processes reveal new qualities that transcend our understanding of photography, in much the same way that photography itself tested Victorian appreciation of the photograph as more than a mechanical emulation of brush and pencil. We have neither the language nor the conceptual framework to accommodate what we see when looking at digital imagery, and we cling with perilous tenacity to the old fallacy of photography, even as it is less credible now than at any time in history.
LEARNING TO SEE AGAIN
Digital processes are taking the language of fact and imagination to new levels. Already in the 1980’s Photoshop challenged belief in the photograph as evidence. We know that photography is simultaneously a record and an interpretation, but the ease of use and the difficulty of discerning digital manipulation began to expand our expectations of the photograph beyond its evidential limitations. Since then, we have jumped vigorously into new generations of visual technology, including CGI, VFX, VR, and lidar[iii], with volumetric imagery and optically pumped magnetometers reaching far beyond the limitations of 20th-century mechanical vision. What the technology makes visible is further enhanced by algorithmic processes, bolstered by the data flooding in from accelerometers, vibrometers, and a dozen other sensors, mixed and enriched with all the information of the internet, knitted by facial recognition technology, and filtered and facilitated by entrepreneurs, crooks, lawyers, and governments. All that was happening even before artificial intelligence introduced synthetic imagery derived not through any form of visual sensor but generated from verbal instruction and algorithmic “hallucinations”.
Attempting to separate “real” from “fake” is a nostalgic exercise that will trap us in a relentless cycle of misunderstanding.
Confused and concerned, we continue to rely on the intellectual framework that helped us understand yesterday’s world. But the attempt to analyse digital imagery in the same way that we used to understand photography is somewhat akin to separating the ingredients of an omelette to reconstruct the egg. Nobody, even with the help of all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, can make an egg from an omelette any more than we can deconstruct a digital image into its composite elements. And yet determined efforts are underway to tether digital imagery to the standards of 20th Century photography in the hope that the truthfulness of digital imagery can be discerned by analysing the placement of pixels.
Attempting to separate “real” from “fake” is a nostalgic exercise that will trap us in a relentless cycle of misunderstanding. Photography is built largely on a binary epistemology of True and False and the new digital environment is considerably more complex than such simplistic analysis allows. We must abandon the intellectual shackles that limit imagery only to what can be observed. It is necessary to reach beyond the analysis of visual facts, and to reassess the structure of knowledge. We need to move beyond viewing images as inert historical records, and to embrace them as active components of our cognitive process. Today’s imagery is dynamic, reacting to context, interacting with our physicality and sometimes even forming itself in anticipation of our expectations.
MODERN SCREENS ARE MORE THAN AN INTERFACE
Much thought is applied to examining the digital processes by which images are generated, and there is widespread interest (and concern) in the ability of artificial intelligence to visualise human imagination in believable emulations of photography. Our window into this seismic shift of technology and culture is the humble screen in all our phones and computers. The modern screen’s familiarity, transparency and intuitive ease of use disguise the extraordinary power of its interactive engagement. Understanding the new rules of representation starts with a radical review of our relationship with the screen and how it is reshaping our connection with the world. There is more to this two-dimensional array of pixels than a simple substitution of static reflective displays by the dynamic luminescence of our screens.
Engaging with screens by tapping and swiping is now commonplace. Haptic interaction with our machines is already banal and “spatial computing” will soon make keyboards and trackpads redundant as aural, visual and gestural interfaces become the norm[iv]. Biometric security goes deeper than these superficial interactions and demonstrates the profound relationship we have with our screens; we are bonded with our screens in ways that are immediate, physical, and intimate to the point of channeling the very essence of our individuality. The machines recognise our faces and blend the physiology of our fingerprints into their operations, which regulate our diets, heart rates, sleep patterns and much more.
Our screens are no longer limited to offering a window on the world; they now offer a nearly seamless interface between our minds and our environment
Our devices are similarly enmeshed with our psychology. We know that our devices track our behaviours, but our willing acceptance of digital surveillance obscures the depth and complexity of the collected data, which accumulates as an immensely detailed memory of our activity that is used to synthesise a mirror of our personalities. With every screen interaction we exchange a little more with the machine, which tirelessly weaves our current activity into a historical record of our location, political position, favourite colour, propensity for risk, social network, emotional predisposition and more. As the screen occupies our attention and services our conscious needs, our physiology and our psychology become subtly blended with the machine. It is a trade, a pact with technology by which we are rewarded with increased convenience, and we enjoy the gratification that comes with the acknowledgement of our peers and by the system. This search for recognition is a primordial human need which the screen fulfils with the likes, shares and comments of social media, and with curated content and behavioural reinforcements. It is a powerful, almost irresistible motivational force.
Our screens are no longer limited to offering a window on the world; they now offer a nearly seamless interface between our minds and our environment, delivering information and responding to our commands, increasingly augmenting our thoughts and modifying our actions. Whether we like it or not, it’s becoming difficult to close the digital window. Reality invades our screens, not only as metaphor or facsimile but as actuality. Many of our core occupations and activities are evolving out of the physical realm and occur increasingly as interactions within the screen.
THE VIRTUAL BECOMES REAL
For example, money is an abstraction that for many centuries was lent reassuring physicality by coins and paper tokens. Today, tangible currency is evaporating into digital wallets for commercial purposes with peer-to-peer payment services replacing the rest. Banking is now almost exclusively a screen activity, and cryptocurrency is testing how far screens can transform the once-familiar processes of tactile exchange. Simultaneously, although many consumer goods remain solid and heavy in our lives, the number of vacant storefronts attests to shopping as an online activity. We turn to screens also for entertainment, which retains some geographical roots in theatres and stadiums, but film and music are migrating to phone, tablet, headset and computer, and board games have given way to video. Creative activities such as music-making, painting, and photography are, with some artisanal exceptions, increasingly driven by, and experienced as, screen phenomena. Printed magazines that were once stacked high in waiting rooms to the point of redundancy are now actually redundant, as are newspapers and other once-tactile media that now exist primarily as screen interactions. Beyond the consumer domain, swathes of activity from construction to surgery and warfare are achieving new reality on screen. Lidar has begun to lift the lid on real-world activities that were previously impossible, such as autonomous vehicular travel and archaeology without shovels. More and more vital functions exist only on screens, not only as representational facsimiles of the world but as the fully formed expression of human experience.
Maybe the most obvious transition from physical to virtual is that of person-to-person interaction where social media, dating apps and screen-mediated relationships are challenging our expectations of human connection. Much attention is given to the consequences for young people whose use of screens is native and pervasive, provoking widespread concern about the effects of 24/7 social contact with attendant competitive looksmaxxing, bullying and extortion. But despite our concern, on-screen socialisation is spreading around the globe; it is varied, diverse, near-ubiquitous and very real in the lives of billions.
REAL WORLD IMPACTS
The cost of servicing our screens is significant. Behind every screen, from those we carry in our pockets to the sun-bright jumbotrons of New York’s Times Square lies the intangible yet nonetheless real world of finance. The economic activities of Amazon, AWS, and the business imperatives of Alphabet, Meta, Netflix, Microsoft and others are expressed on screens with profound impact on the lives of employees, customers and investors. Governments around the globe face the tectonic reverberations of screen usage that can be measured in GDP. Screen technologies spill into the natural environment as server farms divert water, occupy territory and channel energy from production to computing, with a measurable impact on the livability of land around the globe. While the experience of interacting with our screens might feel personal and intimate, the consequences are extensive and maybe existential for the global population, including those minorities who do not themselves use screens.
Examples of screens impacting reality famously include Pokémon Go. The on-screen game was a viral sensation in 2016, and many will remember the game as an early example of augmented reality, where the screen and the real were blended. In a vivid demonstration of how the interactive screen bridges outer and inner lives, Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff[v] explains that while Alphabet has long exploited its power to predict users’ online behaviours, with Pokémon Go, Google sought to direct the movement of feet on the street. The gamified structure of the screen entertainment was carefully configured to motivate players to move themselves to predetermined locations at precisely assigned times. The screens did their work, and people moved.
More chillingly, consider the statement by a senior spokesperson of the Israel Defense Forces who, in June 2024, told reporters that there was “no difference” between working for the al-Aqsa media network[vi] and belonging to Hamas’ armed division[vii]. Regardless of religious and political affiliations, this perceived equivalence between screen and gun attributes very real agency to virtual activity.
Almost simultaneously, 6,600 miles away, multiple news outlets reported that a 20-year-old gamer from New Jersey had flown to Florida with the specific purpose of killing a fellow player and came within a hair of succeeding. Asked for his motive, the perpetrator said of his target, “He’s a bad person online.”[viii]
Life doesn’t get more real than these two screen-driven phenomena randomly plucked from the physical world and reported on consecutive days, although we shouldn’t be surprised that images have impact. Much imagery is created specifically to influence, which we understand intuitively when, for example, we see advertising that we know is prompting us to purchase goods or services. We also understand that editorial imagery is shared selectively to provide partial information and to influence opinion, often with intent to provoke response by viewers.
But the power of an inert two-dimensional image (even if animated on a TV screen) is limited compared to the dynamic intimacy offered by the screen in our hands, and the interactive screen is fast changing the role of imagery from mere representation to being the reality in our lives. With intuitive ease, we find real-world activity woven into our on-screen lives. We nurture our devices as intimate companions that cleave to our sensibilities. The screens know who we are, and we welcome their friendly reassurance that they understand our world.
EXTENDED COGNITION
The genius of the interactive screen is that it presents dynamic information that is formed in real-time and shaped algorithmically by context while simultaneously engaging responsively with the viewer. Our cognitive and emotional processes are projected onto the screen, where they blend with input from the device to create an extraordinary extension of consciousness that is both part of our cognitive process yet simultaneously external to our bodies. It’s a process which, since 1998, has been studied as “extended cognition”[ix].
The idea that our minds exist beyond the body may not be as strange as it might seem
The theory of extended cognition proposes that thoughts are not contained entirely within the brain and can be processed by mechanisms external to our bodies. Although relatively new as a subject of academic analysis, externalised thought can be observed throughout human history. The abacus, for example, offers an illustration of ancient cultures using technology to expand their cognitive abilities. The urge to count sheep or to divide worldly assets between one’s heirs is at least as old as writing, as is the impetus to sell merchandise and to collect tax. All these impulses originate somewhere in the innermost recesses of our minds and for the mentally agile, these thoughts might reach fulfilment as numerical solutions without leaving the brain. However, many of us will reach for a calculating device to execute addition, division, and other calculations.
The idea that our minds exist beyond the body may not be as strange as it might seem, and there are precedents for describing some thoughts as disembodied phenomena. In 1964, Marshall McLuhan described radio and television as extensions of the human central nervous system.[x] The Bible and other religious documents demonstrate a profound awareness that human existence is only partly manifested in the materiality of our flesh and to the religious, it is self-evident that some part of our being exists beyond the contours of the body. In ancient hieroglyphs and parchment scrolls, we find a long history of human experience described outside the body, not as metaphorical or poetic embellishments but as descriptions of the human condition. Viewed in this context it is not extraordinary to consider the interactive screen as another form of externalised consciousness, now with some novel preternatural embellishments.
The interactive screen achieves this by doing more than simply displaying a visualisation of our thoughts in the way that a painter or a sculptor might represent their ideas on canvas or in clay. On the interactive screen, everything is continuously malleable and responsive to our thoughts: arithmetic becomes a dynamic activity in our palms, and cognitive processes from memory to navigation are no longer constrained either by our intrinsic cognitive capacity or the limitations of analogue media. Compare the experience of handling a paper map with the digital equivalent of an on-screen map that automatically orientates to our perspective and is overlaid with external data while also incorporating our personal history in the vicinity.
If the function of a medium is to merely channel information from one place to another, is it appropriate to even think of the interactive screen merely as a means media transmission? The interactive screen channels information and combines many additional artefacts that are shaped by where we are and who we are. The result is a blend of external data and internal impulses that do more than represent the world to us; it reveals us manifested in the world.
Via the internet, our minds roam across continents. The mobile phone is no longer just a tool to perform a limited, specified functions and has evolved into a core component in our lives, carrying a significant cognitive load as we engage with the world. Always close to us and warm from our body heat as much as from its electronic processes, our phones are a part of us. It’s hardly an exaggeration to describe much of modern humanity as effectively cyborgs, organic entities completed by technological attachments[xi]. The screen, and specifically its interactive quality, is the place where this new form of life emerges as a nearly seamless interaction between organism and technology.
NEW CONTEXT CREATES NEW MEANING
It is in this context that we need to develop a new understanding of our screens and the images they share with us. Photography still retains powerful evidential value but eyewitness images sit awkwardly on the interactive screen alongside imagery of uncertain provenance. In its analogue form photography was believable despite the mysterious chemical process, because we trusted the mechanical transfer of light from the world to our eyes via film and paper. Photojournalism carried high prestige in the hierarchy of information because we trusted the mechanism of representation. This is not true of digital processes, partly because we do not fully understand them, but also because the processes that we do understand are known to produce obscure manipulations. Even if an image is originated in a conventional analogue camera, its appearance on a screen requires more intense interrogation because we expect information to be somehow adjusted.
We consume information on the screen with a half-formed awareness of algorithmic filters that correct colours, adjust focus, remove facial blemishes, and so on, all the time knowing that we might be looking at a deepfake or some other form of synthetic image. Maybe it’s intended as information, or as a joke; is it a gateway to a subscription, or is it a vehicle for spring-loaded malware? Clicking on an image can have significant impact on our wellbeing now and into the future.
Conventional photography can stimulate emotional or intellectual responses, but viewing an image on an interactive screen has potential for real-world repercussions. Screen imagery is bound into the actuality of our lives in multiple, very palpable ways by which opening an image file or even lingering too long can have consequences. We all know the irritation of finding ourselves unintentionally enrolled on marketing lists and we need to constantly remind ourselves that an unwary click might land us in difficulty by exposing us to a malicious attack. In extreme circumstances journalists have died because an inadvertent response to a screen has disclosed their location to hostile forces[xii]. This is an entirely new form of engagement that requires viewers to look at a picture with the knowledge that the picture is also looking at us, and the question is not only about how the subject of the photograph might be affected by our engagement, but also how our own lives might be affected by the image.
HOPES AND FEARS
The new visual environment that lives on the interactive screen is one of threat, yet also of opportunity. The fear is that we can no longer rely on photography for a simple representation of truth but we must also recognise the new promise that imagery brings to the process of knowledge formation. Knowledge is a fulcrum for growth, which if misplaced has the potential to collapse trust, but if balanced can launch us to the stars. The reliance on visual information for emotional, social and scientific purposes makes the proper understanding of what we see more than a semantic matter. It is of vital importance that we grasp the full implications of the data blended in the screen and visual cortex.
If we think that rigorous application of the old rules will defend us against AI and synthetic imagery, we have already lost the battle. The issue is no longer about defending facts, but about redefining knowledge.
It is natural that we search for tools and rules to help us navigate this treacherous territory and it’s tempting to reach for the handrails that steadied our journey from the invention of photography through to its establishment as a central tool of visual communication. But trying to constrain today’s visual imagery within the protocols that once guided the ethics and aesthetics of photography will not help us. Imagery is no longer limited by the factual relationship that used to bind the photograph to external realities and if we think that rigorous application of the old rules will defend us against AI and synthetic imagery, we have already lost the battle. The issue is no longer about defending facts, but about redefining knowledge.
Looking forwards, the interactive screen holds an important key to understanding what we are losing and what we are gaining in the current transition: it is a focal point where old notions of representation and reality are being demolished and reassembled. Equipped with this perspective, our appreciation of digital imagery can move from fear to curiosity and maybe even excitement as we find new ways to explore the world.
[i] Henry Fox Talbot’s 1835 image of a window in Lacock Abbey is recognised as the first fixed negative from which multiple prints could be made.
[ii] The word “photography” was originated by Sir John Hirschel, directly linking the new technology invented in 1840 with the preceding technology of drawing, by combining the Greek words for light (phõtós) and drawing (graphé)
[iii] CGI = Computer Generated Imagery
VFX = Visual Effects (commonly used in video and film productions)
VR = Virtual Reality
Lidar = Laser Imaging Detection And Ranging (commonly used to assist navigation of autonomous vehicles, and multitude of other specialized applications)
[iv] Spatial computing, also referred to as Ubiquitous computing is “a concept in software engineering, hardware engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear seamlessly anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing implies use on any device, in any location, and in any format. A user interacts with the computer, which can exist in many different forms, including laptop computers, tablets, smart phones and terminals in everyday objects such as a refrigerator or a pair of glasses. The underlying technologies to support ubiquitous computing include the Internet, advanced middleware, kernels, operating systems, mobile codes, sensors, microprocessors, new I/Os and user interfaces, computer networks, mobile protocols, global navigational systems, and new materials.” Wikipedia, June 26, 2025
[v] “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” Shoshana Zuboff, PublicAffairs Hachette, 2019
[vi] Al-Aqsa TV is based in Gaza and run by Hamas. It started broadcasting in 2006.
[vii] ‘The grey zone: how IDF views some journalists in Gaza as legitimate targets” The Guardian 25th June 2024
[viii] “New Jersey gamer flew to Florida and beat fellow player with hammer” The Guardian 26th June 2024
[ix] Extended cognition was initially proposed as the extended mind thesis by Andy Clark and David Chalmers, Edinburgh University, 1998
[x] “Understanding Media: The Extensions Of Man” Marshall McLuhan, McGraw Hill 1964
[xi] Cyborg is a portmanteau word derived from cybernetic and organism. The term is attributed to Manfred Clynes and Nathan S Kline who in 1960 described organic and mechanised body parts combining to create a new form of life.
[xii] Marie Colvin, a war correspondent working for the Sunday Times of London, was killed in Homs, Syria on February 22, 2012 while “…working in a makeshift media center that was destroyed in the assault, raising suspicions that Syrian security forces might have identified its location by tracing satellite signals. Experts say that such tracking is possible with sophisticated equipment.” New York Times February 22, 2012