Selfie Sticks
#123
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#124
Join Date: Nov 2010
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I think I can safely say that most of those stick-wielding selfie-shooters we're complaining about in this thread aren't doing anything special to ensure their selfies are around to enjoy in fifty years. Just a hunch, but I'm sure I'm right.
Its been said, that with the switch to digital we're seeing an era where less and less photos are printed or archived in any way, than ever before. In the old days, everyone had drawers of negatives and boxes of color slides or prints which lasted more-or-less forever. Now, increasingly, everyone's pics are saved on an SD card (which could get lost), in their phone, or in their computer. Does everyone remember to save everything when they buy a new phone? How about ten phones from now? One very BIG concern is that its very easy to lose entire years worth of photos all at once.
Its been said, that with the switch to digital we're seeing an era where less and less photos are printed or archived in any way, than ever before. In the old days, everyone had drawers of negatives and boxes of color slides or prints which lasted more-or-less forever. Now, increasingly, everyone's pics are saved on an SD card (which could get lost), in their phone, or in their computer. Does everyone remember to save everything when they buy a new phone? How about ten phones from now? One very BIG concern is that its very easy to lose entire years worth of photos all at once.
Those who are not very digital-savvy will often take photos, print them on a crappy home printer with no more than a 5-10 year estimated lifespan, then delete the files.
Younger folks, especially kids, post all of their phone pics to things like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook, and never give them a second thought. But when they get a new phone, the old stuff is almost always moved over for them by the provider who programs the phone.
Those in my generation are in between. We are old enough to remember negatives and appreciate their value, but young enough to understand that the digital files ARE our negatives. We also developed our digital habits in the days before the internet, so we tend to be careful about backing everything up in more than one place. We've all lost stuff to hard drive meltdowns or lightning strikes or even home disasters like fire and flood.
We haven't yet arrived at the point where everybody will have a permanent online presence that's automatically backed up by providers without us even thinking about it, but in another 10 years we'll probably be there. The current crop of online backup services will transmute into affordable cloud-storage services where everybody can store terrabytes of crap indefinitely for a buck or two per day, and they'll all standardize on a customer-friendly method of data migration from one provider to another, similar to the way that phone providers all now provide easy migration when you change phones. That's when real permanence will come about.
#126
Join Date: Sep 2013
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We haven't yet arrived at the point where everybody will have a permanent online presence that's automatically backed up by providers without us even thinking about it, but in another 10 years we'll probably be there. The current crop of online backup services will transmute into affordable cloud-storage services where everybody can store terrabytes of crap indefinitely for a buck or two per day, and they'll all standardize on a customer-friendly method of data migration from one provider to another, similar to the way that phone providers all now provide easy migration when you change phones. That's when real permanence will come about.
#127
Join Date: Jul 2014
Programs: Jeff is Deaf
Posts: 541
I think I can safely say that most of those stick-wielding selfie-shooters we're complaining about in this thread aren't doing anything special to ensure their selfies are around to enjoy in fifty years. Just a hunch, but I'm sure I'm right.
Its been said, that with the switch to digital we're seeing an era where less and less photos are printed or archived in any way, than ever before. In the old days, everyone had drawers of negatives and boxes of color slides or prints which lasted more-or-less forever. Now, increasingly, everyone's pics are saved on an SD card (which could get lost), in their phone, or in their computer. Does everyone remember to save everything when they buy a new phone? How about ten phones from now? One very BIG concern is that its very easy to lose entire years worth of photos all at once.
Its been said, that with the switch to digital we're seeing an era where less and less photos are printed or archived in any way, than ever before. In the old days, everyone had drawers of negatives and boxes of color slides or prints which lasted more-or-less forever. Now, increasingly, everyone's pics are saved on an SD card (which could get lost), in their phone, or in their computer. Does everyone remember to save everything when they buy a new phone? How about ten phones from now? One very BIG concern is that its very easy to lose entire years worth of photos all at once.
#128
Join Date: Nov 2010
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I think when yearly storage prices fall to about 75% of the going rate per gb of hard drive prices, that's when the online file storage movement - not just photo sharing sites but actual cloud storage and cloud-based backups - will really go mainstream. It will also help when providers start offering auto-migration from one service to another, as phone providers do with phone data when buying a new handset, or number portability when changing providers.
#130
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#132
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#133
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Boston
Posts: 467
Oh my god, don't get me started. The selfie stick is the single worst and most annoying thing to happen to travel since the advent of Ryanair. You can't go anywhere these days without getting jabbed, poked and prodded by those blasted things.
And why have people become so obsessed with taking photographs OF THEMSELVES? Here you are in this incredible spot, and you've got the camera turned around backwards for yet another snapshot of yourself. It's kind of disturbing, frankly.
And why have people become so obsessed with taking photographs OF THEMSELVES? Here you are in this incredible spot, and you've got the camera turned around backwards for yet another snapshot of yourself. It's kind of disturbing, frankly.
#134
Join Date: Nov 2010
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A) People who have decades of scanned old photos and slides
B) People who shoot video
C) People who shoot in Raw format
D) People who are planning for the future
E) People who wisely store and back up their photos, video, music, and all other data files in the same spot, rather than taking a random dice-throwing approach to backups
F) All of the above
B) People who shoot video
C) People who shoot in Raw format
D) People who are planning for the future
E) People who wisely store and back up their photos, video, music, and all other data files in the same spot, rather than taking a random dice-throwing approach to backups
F) All of the above
#135
Suspended
Join Date: Dec 2014
Posts: 8,460
The images where I'm just taking a picture of something (Eiffel Tower for example) aren't as special. Because someone somewhere has already taken that same shot and done a much better job. If I want a perfect image of the Eiffel Tower (or anything else), I can go to Google Images and get it. I don't need to take it.
But the special ones are the ones with me in front of something really cool.