Tempus Fugit: From Kodachrome to Keynote (#423)

Twenty years ago, preparing to give a lecture at a conference meant embarking on a logistical expedition.

My suitcase was packed not with clothes but with boxes of Kodachrome slides, each one labeled and numbered.

Preparing a single slide could take hours. Photographs had to be scanned or re-photographed. Text had to be shot onto diazotype film. Then came the anxious wait for slide processing, hoping the lab didn’t scratch or miscut a frame. There was no margin for error and certainly no room for last-minute inspiration.

And then there were the movies. Eight-millimeter and sixteen-millimeter reels that felt like relics even when they were new. A two-minute 16mm sequence could weigh nearly as much as the projector itself. Every splice, every frame, was a small act of craftsmanship. Shooting, developing, editing, labeling, packing. It all took days, sometimes weeks. Showing a movie meant juggling cables, reels, and lights, and praying the projector bulb wouldn’t blow mid-lecture (which it often did!).

International travel made it even more complicated. Airlines were unforgiving, and the combined weight of carousels, slides and movies could easily exceed fifty pounds. I would trudge through airports with these fragile tools of communication carefully packed in hand luggage, terrified that baggage handlers might treat them like bricks.

Today, by contrast, the same lecture can be carried across continents in a thumb drive tucked into a breast pocket, or uploaded to the cloud before the suitcase is even zipped.

This morning, I finally threw out dozens of those old 16mm films. Each reel once represented hours of work, creativity, and hope. But the technology has outpaced them. They’ve become ghosts from another era. Obsolete. Heavy. Silent.

Yet as I dropped them into the trash, I hesitated. Those reels carried more than images.

They carried memory, effort, and the physical weight of learning how to teach, how to communicate, how to tell a story with light.

The times have changed. And for the better in many ways.

But part of me misses the smell of acetate, the clatter of a movie projector, and the satisfying click of a carousel advancing to the next slide. They reminded us that ideas once had substance. You could hold them in your hands, and they made a sound when they turned.

Tempus Fugit

Time flies. Not just in the way it passes, but in how swiftly it erases the weight of things. The Kodachrome slides, the spliced film, the click and whir of a movie projector. All belonged to a world that demanded patience, precision, and pride in the process. Each lecture carried a sense of ceremony because it cost something: time, attention, and intention.

Today, we live in an age of frictionless creation.

Presentations appear with a few keystrokes.

Mistakes are erased in an instant.

The constraints that once forced us to think, to plan, to prepare, have largely vanished.

Efficiency has triumphed. But perhaps at the expense of reverence.

It’s tempting to celebrate how much easier it all is now. But ease is not the same as meaning.

When everything becomes instant, the sense of occasion diminishes.

The struggle once lent weight to the achievement.

The time invested gave value to the result.

Still, nostalgia is a gentle liar. We forget the frustration, the fatigue, the nights hunched over a lightbox or projector.

What remains in memory is the tactile satisfaction. The click of a slide advancing. The hum of a projector. The applause that followed when the story landed.

Tempus fugit.

Time flies, and with it, the rituals that once grounded us.

Perhaps the challenge now is not to mourn their passing but to find new ways to slow time down. To bring back intention and craft, even in a world that no longer demands it.

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