People capture more images today, than at anytime in the history of mankind. We have progressed from the first drawings on rock walls, to painting, to photography, to digital photography. Along the way there has been a massive growth in the number and quality of images captured. More than half of the people on the face of the earth now carry a digital camera - most on their phones. Granted most of the images will be lost to time, but if 1%, or that matter, if 1/1000 of 1% of them survive 100 years from now the world will have the largest image archive in history.
What will those images say about our time in history? What will it show? The the images make a difference in understanding our time, our history in the making?
I post a photo a day, or more, here on this blog. I assume that Google is storing all of these, that bots and AI are selecting images that contribute to the understanding of the world. I sincerely hope that 100 years from now, long after I am gone, some meaning will be found in the images and ramblings that I post.
I am hoping that the internet is capturing and preserving some of this. I know that my digital archive, nearing 90,000 images will disappear when I do. Maybe it is news, or a portrait of life, art or documentary, or maybe it is none of those, just the ramblings of my mind.
Not that I do it, but it probably important to carefully title your photos so that bots can find them. Maybe add your name to them too. "100 hundred years ago, TP of Washington DC took this photo of the long demolished..."
ReplyDeleteThat will fill a few hours, with 90,000 images in the cloud.
DeleteI don't know it's quite something or appalling, like yourself the number of pictures I have, though not near you. I have been taking time to keep my real goods one, and have been weeding out others, or blurred images and such, duplicates....and deleting them.
ReplyDeleteI keep almost all of them, I had an exhibit idea recently, Imperfect Images.
DeleteThe one improvement with digital photography is that people can weed out the really bad photos. Of course, that could be done in print, as well, but many people saved everything. I try to thin out the ranks of my sometimes hundreds of photos a day. But I don’t think there’ll be flea markets and other places selling old thumb drives of random photos.
ReplyDeleteTry to find a slot on a new Mac for that thumb drive, you need an adaptor for that.
DeleteI have a ScanDisk Ultra Dual Drive with both sizes of adaptors.Look into that!
DeleteDust in the wind like everything else, I think.
ReplyDeleteWe will all be forgotten faster than we can imagine.
DeleteThe internet, along with your photos and your blog, will probably last forever. I kinda like that idea.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens on FB, lasts for ever.
DeleteA photo paints a thousand words. I enjoy looking at your photos and feel fortunate that we live in a world where it is so easy to snap a shot of anything.
ReplyDeleteWe almost always have a camera with us
DeleteI hadn't thought about how Google stores images. That certainly is something to think about especially with AI looming large.
ReplyDeleteOnce I post an image online, I feel that I have made it public property.
DeleteI think a lot of the photos will be lost as technology keeps changing and our old storage techniques are no longer compatible with what comes in the future. If someone we know doesn't take the time to try to convert our old photos, they can disappear. It's happened a lot in my lifetime and with AI now in the mix, our photos could be changed to show something entirely different than what we intended. Of course, old printed photos haven't always lasted either...
ReplyDeleteI was looking through scanned slides, and the differences in film made a huge difference in how they are aging. The best was Kodachrome and I could write a whole page on why.
DeleteIt is so easy to take many, many photos when the phone has a camera. I do love my digital "big" camera but the convenience of the phone has its advantages. As a photographer friend once told me, "The best camera is the one you have with you." When it's my time to leave this earth, my kids are going to roll their eyes when they see all the photos I have taken!
ReplyDeleteI scanned all of Dad's slides, and left the prints for my sister to sort through. I then ended up with a box full of prints that I scanned and shared with everyone. I have a secondary blog, filled with old family photos.
DeleteI fear what Google might do in the future re. blogs and their other archived material. Google used to host an image-sharing website called "Panoramio". I contributed over a thousand geo-located images to this website but one day it all disappeared when Google effectively switched it off. I was just one of thousands of contributors who were left bereft. All that industry and commitment was blown away and there was nothing we could do about it.
ReplyDeleteIt could happen, we don't really own this once we post it
Delete90K! Imagine! I know from genealogy some of these will continue somehow in a fateful way.
ReplyDelete