What’s in the Rectangle?

Here’s a game. What is in the rectangle above these words? Take a minute and really think about it for a second. Think deep and look beyond the literal.

No. Not yet. Look again.

A little more.

Take one last glance.

Well, it’s an image. It’s an image of a woman holding a camera, and it seems kind of old.

Alright that’s a good start. But what else is there? What else can you get out of this space.

There are some houses in the background with some shrubs. That camera is pretty big and old, kinda strange looking. The woman has short red hair and she’s white.

Didn’t I say not to be so literal.

Ok, let’s see. Someone had to have taken the picture. So there must be another person who was there.

Good. Good. Keep going.

Alright. So if there was someone else there they must have had their own camera. And since it’s so old it was captured on film.

Excellent. So how did it get here?

Well the film has to be developed. They probably had to keep it for a while to make it here. I mean, the internet wasn’t around then. Guess that means it had to be scanned at some point.

And what happens with the scan?

It must have been saved on a computer somewhere, then uploaded to the internet. Which is where you got the photo from, right?

Yes. That’s right. I Googled it.

So you found it on Google, downloaded it, and put it here.

Where is here? Or what is here?

Like, on Medium? On the internet?

Didn’t I get the picture from the internet? Is it still there? Where is that?

Hmm, I don’t know. It’s on the internet, but I’m seeing it on Medium’s piece of the internet. It sent me the data from their servers and it ended up on my screen.

So you have the data of the picture. But where is the picture?

Well the picture is the data. It just has to be shown in a certain way. The data represents the information that the computer uses to figure out which pixels to light on up on the screen.

Is the data the picture? Or the pixels?

Both?

So if the pixels are not on the screen the picture isn’t there?

Sort of. People have to see the pixels to see the picture. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of data we don’t understand.

So the picture is in your brain then?

If you put it that way, I guess it has to be. That’s really weird though because then all the stuff in the picture, isn’t really there, but instead it’s just in my head.

Even more than that. Where did the picture come from again?

Another person taking the photo. They took the picture that they wanted in their head, and somehow it’s now in my head. Is it the same thing?

Is it?

Well, no. I don’t know who that person was or who this woman with the red hair is. It doesn’t mean the same to me as it did to them. I mean, the picture is the same, like the pixels and what kind of light hits our eyes, but the interpretation is different.

Then there’s really no picture. Only interpretations of the picture made from the data shown as pixels.

I guess so.

Then what’s in the rectangle at the beginning?

The start of a terrible game.

Precisely.