The Picture Problem

“The Picture Problem” by Malcom Gladwell looks into how useful Photography really is. For instance, in his article he talks about how photography helps in the time of war. Gladwell’s example of how photos are used on the battlefield is the Air Force destroying Scud missiles that were being fired at Israel by Iraq. The Cameras the Air Forced used cost 4 million dollars and took the perfect picture. Later on it was shown that the number of Scuds that were destroyed for sure was 0. People wonder how could this be possible we were using the perfect camera. People tend to believe pictures. “That photography not only does not, but cannot lie, is a matter of belief, an article of fait, (Gladwell)” The problem ended up being on the pilots end. The pilots were working on locating the Scuds at night and only had 5 minutes to get the job done. The problem with working at night is that human’s depth perception is messed up. This is a clear example of human error. Human error occurred because of the 5 minutes window does not give a person a lot of time to do there job accurately. People tend to rush, when they are under pressure. When people rush, mistakes are made.

Gladwell’s article shows human error can cause a lot of problems but it is not the only issue. The Quality of the imaged also caused problems for the pilots. The resolution of the images when this occurred was good. You could see images and identify an object. For example, you could tell what a truck was, but from the altitude the pilots were at you could not tell much else. This shows flaws in technology. Using the greatest cameras money could buy, you would expect better resolution in an image. Gladwell’s article shows that human error and flaws with technology still exist. Technology and humans need to keep evolving before it can become perfect. But it needs to evolve at the same rate because technology will not do any good if people cannot operate it.