Sense & high-tech sensibility

The reason technology can't keep up with art is because while technology keeps improving all the time, ideal art doesn't. It has no need to. Take photography. An entry level digital SLR today is as far removed from a 1950s rangefinder as that is from a turn of the century box camera. They're literally light years apart in performance. Yet when it comes to the value of the end result — the actual photograph in question — the aesthetic estimation remains at the same level. It's either good or not good. Or, take literature. How much better would Shakespeare have written if instead of a quill he had used a fountain pen, typewriter or word processor? His output may have increased but would the quality of King Lear also have improved?

And almost all of us would agree with this simple precept. The pyramids, Great Wall of China and Taj Mahal were built before the development of heavy earth-moving equipment and other sophisticated civil engineering tools, yet they remain equal marvels of architecture. Eleventh century Gregorian chants were monophonic whereas the Grateful Dead routinely used polyphony, a much later musical growth. If, however, the chanters were to be switched through centuries with the real deadheads the chances are that both would still be singers of great songs. But to be fair to technology , it's not in competition with anything except its own outdated avatars. It's the technologists who sometimes don't get it and get into the race.

Take religion. For thousands of years they've outdone one another trying to build bigger and better temple complexes , each grander and more ostentatious than the other, studded with precious gems and stones, carved in ivory and jade, embellished with gold and silver. Despite this monumental overkill, though, some of these structures do turn out to have great artistic merit even if, in the process, designing gets casually confused with worship which, like all artistry, has its fountainhead completely elsewhere and can hardly be affected by outward appearances.

Similarly idols and symbols for that matter which are also subjected to improved makeovers on a regular basis. What does the technical knowledge of building (or blasting) a 180 foot Bamiyan cliff carving have anything to do with the essence of Buddhism except to show that, once again, technology couldn't match the art of inner reverence?