Expect the unexpected

Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s superb book on probablility theory (don’t glaze; stick with me. Anyone can grasp the humanities. Math and science are far harder, which is why they pay better) is titled The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

Simply stated, Taleb casts uncertainty in the light of the Black Swan. When the world believed all swans were white the first black one was a major shock to the system, the seemingly impossible had happened. Historians rushed to rewrite history and, of course, each one saw the black swan coming.

Each of us has had a major black swan event. Probably many. Take my parents. Until August 31, 1939 their predecessors had climbed the social ladder (probably lucking out on the right Black Swan events) and had nicely reached the status of minor nobility. That took some seven or eight centuries and lands and possessions were among the results. Then, come September 1, suddenly Hans and his SS legions are at the door demanding the keys to the wine cellar after shooting the dogs. No one saw it coming. Financial futures in the markets did not see it. So don’t rewrite history. Churchill may have guessed right (no one listened anyway) but for my parents this was a major Black Swan day. They had succeeded to wealth created over centuries then, BANG!, it was gone in a day. Well, at least they were lucky not to be named Rosenblum, or I wouldn’t be writing this.

The classic Black Swan event economists teach (at least the intellectually honest ones) is the case of the turkey and how history leaves the bird clueless about the future. For a couple of years he gets 3 square meals a day, enjoys Mozart (if he is a California Diestel turkey!) and, why, even on the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week he is as happy as a turkey can be. Then whack, it’s Wednesday and the turkey meets his Black Swan. Exactly the same technique was used by the Germans, of course, in the death camps in my parents’ Poland – “It’s time for a shower now. This way please”. Your victims will line up for execution as long at the previous lot didn’t live to tell about it.

In photography there have been many unpredictable Black Swan events and I have had my share. First was my discovery of the Leica as a teenager. It was a serious Black Swan and changed the way I saw things and how I photographed. I didn’t see it coming.

Later, affordable color was another BS, if you permit the abbreviation. Monochrome quickly ceased to interest me – a dimension was missing and I couldn’t unlearn it any more than I had predicted its effect on my work. I didn’t see it coming.

Next the computer did a BS on the darkroom. When PCs first came along in the early 1980s I was working on Wall Street and our first IBM two floppy PC sat there forlornly for months. Someone would switch it on once in a while and ROM Basic, written by none other than Bill Gates, popped up on the green screen. We wrote a few programs but gave up for the sheer complexity of the thing. Suddenly, one day a box marked Lotus 123 arrived and with it we had a BS event. Within a year every employee had a PC on his desk and another at home. I didn’t see it coming.

Then there was the inkjet printer. Big prints everywhere. No way to predict that. I didn’t see it coming.

Then the Internet. No one saw that BS coming.

And, most recently, digital imaging. That did to film what the German invaders did to my parents. It took a bit longer, but it was the latest photographic BS. And, yes, I didn’t see it coming. Amusingly, sometimes those closest to the Swan don’t see it. They are too invested in, and too blinded by, what they know. Kodak helped develop digital imaging, killed their mainstay and failed to capitalize on their own invention. Their BS whacked them.

And while Taleb’s book is mostly focused on the financial world (where Black Swan events happen about every year – can you say Long Term Capital Management in 1998 or Nasdaq in 2000 or the credit crunch last quarter?) I recommend it to photographers everywhere. Expect the unexpected from this fine book, because you will not see it coming.