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The Mirror Effect: The rise of mirrors in the fifteenth century
- dorfsmay 10y agoI wonder what effect the new convenient cheap mirror had on the profession of barber. Did people shave themselves before mirrors became widely available?
- voidz 10y agoFun fact: we are used to seeing our own faces in the mirror image of how others see us. Thus, if you have a picture of yourself which you really dislike, mirror it and see if it helps - on photos we see our faces mirrored from what we're used to, hence why they look off so often, and why it can feel so difficult to get the right picture from ourselves taken.
- CoryG89 10y agoAlso a fun fact; you can make a non-reversing mirror by putting two mirrors perpendicular to each other at 90°. When you look head on into both mirrors where they meet, you will see your image the same as others see it.
- internaut 10y agoThat is cool. Are there other ways to make a non-reversing mirror? I was thinking of car mirrors. I have a mirror trick of my own. You know how there is one way mirrors, when used between two rooms they rely on one room being lighter/darker in order to work. Well if you purchase a special mirror it is possible to make an optical illusion with three rooms in a row involved. Each of the rooms furthest from each other can see into the interior room, but not into each other. This makes the sense of space much larger. I must talk to a magician or illusionist to see what other ways exist to achieve similar effects.
- kgm 10y agoA few years ago, a Dr. R. Andrew Hicks of Drexel University designed a non-reversing mirror that is a single sheet of glass. The reflection is slightly distorted, however. News coverage: http://techfragments.com/inventions-non-reverse-mirror/ http://techfragments.com/inventions-non-reverse-mirror/ https://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16585-amazing-mirrors https://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16585-amazing-mirrors Photo from his website: http://www.math.drexel.edu/~ahicks/images/opticks.jpg http://www.math.drexel.edu/~ahicks/images/opticks.jpg
- internaut 10y agoVery clever! Aside from illusions there are many interesting proposals using mirrors. I think most people don't think you can use mirrors with fibre optics to bounce daylight directly into people's houses for indoor lighting. There is also this cool trick you can do by using something called a 'cold mirror', where the visible spectrum is tapped into for lighting but at the same time the IR portion of the spectrum passes through the cold mirror and onto a solar thermal tank for making hot water. All this, with mirrors!
- vog 10y ago> That is cool. Are there other ways to make a non-reversing mirror? I don't know if that counts, but: Get in front of your webcam and watch yourself on the screen. If your laptop screen is too small, note that modern large screens (usually sold as "TV") are larger than typical mirrors. If all you need is a quick hand mirror, just use your smartphone in selfie mode.
- enigmango 10y agoNote that some phones do mirror the front-facing camera view (though actual photos taken are not mirrored) [0]. Both my Nexus phones have done this, so I assume it's a common Android feature. I don't know about iPhones. Regarding webcams: Hangouts also mirrors your camera to you during video calls. [1] [0]: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-selfie-pictures-mirror-images-while-rear-camera-images-are-not https://www.quora.com/Why-are-selfie-pictures-mirror-images-... [1]: https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/hangouts/IadQZW8GF48 https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/hangouts/Ia...
- CapitalistCartr 10y agoFor several years, I parted my hair the way I liked the look. I'm embarrassed to say how long before I realized and reversed sides.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI didn't realize the connection until now (even though I understand the way mirrors work). Weird how one often doesn't take that one last obvious step of an inference. I guess now I'll use a smartphone camera instead of a mirror for grooming.
- d-sc 10y agoMost front facing cameras reverse the image to make it look like you are looking into a mirror.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoYes. I just tried that now, and unfortunately, my S7 does reverse the image from the front camera :/.
- FreeFull 10y agoThere should be an option to flip the image somewhere though, to be the right way around.
- DanitaBaires 10y agoUse a webcam with the always included AMcap application. Or skype, with the mirror option disabled.
- kqr 10y agoI did this too but I also realized "the way I've always parted my hair" is likely also "the way other people are used to seeing me" and thus "the way other people like it" too. So although I like it "to the left" everyone else likes it when I have it "to the right". I am the only one who doesn't care for that, but I also never see it other than flipped!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- slavik81 10y agoI actually find it weird even just seeing myself in a mirror. It's a bit like hearing your own voice in a recording.
- ZeroGravitas 10y agoThe recorded voice thing is similar to the mirror thing. That is how everyone else hears you, but you hear yourself via vibration too, which is missing in the recording and so you sound oddly different to yourself.
- pointillistic 10y agoNice article but I doubt the premise. Rich people had their portraits and sculptures made long before the invention. Think on Nefertiti or the multiple depictions in Egypt. Still in Egypt, there are Fayum Portraits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fayum_mummy_portraits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fayum_mummy_portraits In Ancient Greece and especially Rome, there were hyper realistic sculptures of the rulers, generals and rich people. Pompeii art is realistic. Instead the article follows the path claiming that a technological invention brings with itself a change in human nature, a dubious argument always. Even today with all the selfies, people still relate to themselves in relationship to how they are perceived by others. And there are a lot of beautiful people who think they are ugly...
- cobbzilla 10y agoThe point of the article was that regular, ordinary people didn't see their own faces clearly until fairly recently, and when that happened it shifted the sense of self and identity with long-term ramifications.
- bane 10y agoYou can always just look at your reflection in a dark, still, liquid, like soup, or dirty water, or clear liquid in a dark container, etc. Sure you're looking down and it's kind of inconvenient, but it's not like people couldn't see themselves ever.
- thaumasiotes 10y agoYeah, this was never a secret. The myth of Narcissus has him trapped by his own reflection in a pool of water. Household mirrors go way back, although the quality of the reflection you could get was well below where it is now.
- pointillistic 10y agoGood point, I still doubt the premise. Because you can claim by extension that photography was as radical a change. And there is little evidence to the fact. I claim that humans still primarily identify through the relationship with the others. Before or after the mirror. P.S. Fayum portraits that I mentioned where of all people, rich and poor.
- marcoperaza 10y ago>Previously the parameters of individual identity had been limited to an individual’s interaction with the people around him and the religious insights he had over the course of his life. Thus individuality as we understand it today did not exist: people only understood their identity in relation to groups—their household, their manor, their town or parish—and in relation to God. This is a ridiculous argument. But par for the course for what passes as serious scholarship in the humanities these days. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair And Richard Dawkin's great piece: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html
- Ensorceled 10y agoWait. Why, exactly, is this argument ridiculous? Your references are about the Sokal hoax; are you claiming this is a hoax too? Is your only evidence an unrelated 20 year old hoax? I'm somewhat credulous about the original assertion myself, but what is just as bad as shoddy humanities scholarship is the out of hand dismissing of all humanities scholarship as shoddy.
- marcoperaza 10y agoThe argument is ridiculous because it's saying that people had no sense of self and identity until mirrors are invented. This is plainly false to anyone who is a human being. It is also plainly false with a cursory look at ancient literature, which is full of characters with strong egos.
- Ensorceled 10y agoThat's not actually what the article says. It's saying the that sense of identity was mostly experienced as a set of relationships and roles and that an identity distinct from any role or relationship became more common place after mirrors and the clear self picture that provided to people. It's also not "plainly false" ... most people identify themselves by their roles and relationships. If you ask people to describe themselves they will universally use role and relationship descriptors: computer programmer, cop, Catholic, mother, grandfather, ... It is common for people who retire to have difficulty with the loss of identity that their job and role their occupation provided.
- aaachilless 10y agoHow would one characterize the difference between publications like Lapham's Quarterly or Nautil.us and publications like the New York Times or the Washington Post? I've been trying to discover publications that are more like the former and less like the latter, but I'm not sure how to differentiate between the two well enough for, say, a Google search. Searches along the lines of "publications like Lapham's" haven't done the trick.
- fiatpandas 10y agoYou'll probably like Cabinet Magazine as well. I'd refer to them as "art and culture publications", "literary publications", "alternative". I think the best way of discovering interesting publications is to visit bookshops that carry ones that you've already discovered and grown to like. Generally independent bookstores around major universities will carry a lot of literary magazines, and other alternative low-circulation publications.
- aaachilless 10y agoI never would have thought that brick-and-mortar would be the way to go. Thanks for the insight! Also, I just gave Cabinet a peak, and it definitely looks interesting. Thanks again!
- antif 10y agoIn regards to the print edition, Lapham's is notably devoid of commercial advertisement.
- antognini 10y agoSame with Nautilus. There's just a few pages in the back.
- keyle 10y agoIn many years it will be interesting to read what the effect of social medias have had on humanity. I'm suspecting not so good as initially thought.
- paulsutter 10y agoFun fact: mirrors don't reverse anything. Easily proven, raise your right hand while looking in the mirror. The hand in the right side goes up. No reversal. What's gets reversed is when an observer looks at you. Since an observer is facing the opposite direction, his left side is aligned with your right side. Alternate view: if a mirror really did reverse left from right, why don't they reverse top from bottom as well? Because they don't reverse anything. On the other hand, if an observer were turned upside down, you'd appear upside down to him.
- Falling3 10y agoI think you're forgetting a dimension.
- tgb 10y agoThis description is missing a key part which explains why it appears to reverse left and right. Mirrors reverse something: the direction perpendicular to the mirror. Mirrors can also reverse up-and-down just as easily as left-and-right. Imagine holding text printed on a clear sheet up before so that you can read it. Now look in a mirror that's behind the sheet. The text in the mirror is so readable, since it's reversed in the one dimension it has symmetry in (the thickness of the sheet). But now if the sheet were opaque, you'd only see the back of the page in the mirror and no text. So you flip the page around to read it. Now you've rotated AND mirrored the text and it looks swapped left to right instead of by the mirror's perpendicular direction: the rotation changes which axis was mirrored. Start again with the text facing you ready for reading, but now rotate the text to face the mirror again but this time do so in the 'unusual' manner of flipping it head over heel. Now the text in the mirror is mirrored upside down! Which rotation you apply changes which axis is apparently inverted. We're just so used to rotating things about their vertical axis that everything looks mirrored left and right. Also there are mirrors which do reverse specifically left and right in the manner that you debunk above, but they are nonsymmetrically concave.
- roywiggins 10y agoThe way I try to explain it is in absolute (ish) coordinates: If you face north, your image faces south. Your left hand is on your west side. The reflection of your left hand is also on the west side. If you grab the mirror and turn so you face west, your reflection faces east and both your left hand and the reflection are on the south side. If you reset the mirror and then stand sideways (facing east, mirror to your north), your left hand is to the north and right hand is to the south. In the mirror, the image of your left hand is to the south and right hand, to the north. But your reflection is facing east, just like you are.
- fit2rule 10y agoI've often said to my friends and family, during more philosophical discussions, that the one object that has caused the most destruction to the human species is the mirror ..
- dracht 10y agoWould you care to elaborate on that?
- seashuttle 10y agoCool article. I think I got my fill of general knowledge for today.