Tag Archives: internet

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Natchez, Miss. (LOC)

Natchez, Miss. (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

When I talk with people about Flickr, the easy parts to explain are the aspects of organizing and sharing your own photos. Some folks get stuck on the sharing aspect; “why would I want everyone to see my personal photos?” they ask, and then I talk about the privacy settings.

But the unique and amazing aspects of Flickr go beyond sorting and sharing, and I find these harder to explain. There’s the fact that Flickr can be a personal archive or anything, not just photos. But it’s also a national archive and a way to document bigger experiences.

Take, for example, the Flickr sets of the Library of Congress. Thus far there are two, one with images from newspapers in the 1910s and one of color slides from the 1930s-1940s. The image above is from the latter group. They’re intriguing and absorbing to flip through, they’re documented with dates and locations and other details, and they’re all available to use in your own works.

Why is the U.S. Library of Congress doing this?

We’ve been acquiring photos since the mid-1800s when photography was the hot new technology. Because images represent life and the world so vividly, people have long enjoyed exploring our visual collections. Looking at pictures opens new windows to understanding both the past and the present. Favorite photos are often incorporated in books, TV shows, homework assignments, scholarly articles, family histories, and much more.

The Prints & Photographs Division takes care of 14 million of the Library’s pictures and features more than 1 million through online catalogs. Offering historical photo collections through Flickr is a welcome opportunity to share some of our most popular images more widely.

They invite the public to help in this project by tagging photos and solving “mysteries” by tagging photos and suggesting details.

There’s a pang in it somewhere

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I’ve been enjoying reading “Is that blogging?” recently. (I found it through Tremble, btw.) I don’t know who the author is, but apparently he is currently 25 and living in Dublin, and he enjoys live music. I believe his first name is Pierce.

He seems to write fiction and poetry sometimes.

He’s interesting and thoughtful, and also sort of funny, as evidenced by this and this, and also this.

Isn’t the web fun?

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Yes, but…

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Faded Glory

Faded Glory, originally uploaded by bfurnace.

Today on a mailing list I follow there was a lively debate. Lots of interesting ideas were batted around, and good thinks were thought. (You can find the threads in the Journalism_Next archives — look for posts with "The Future of Everything" in the title.)

In the end, my big takeaway was that I don’t much enjoy online debates.

I already thought some of the conclusions that people came to, so there weren’t any big ah-ha moments for me. (Maybe that just means I didn’t really give full consideration to the viewpoints which I didn’t agree with; but on this occasion I happened to agree a lot, so I think I was paying attention.)

More significantly, I felt like this discussion kept interrupting my day (because I let it, by checking email to see if anyone said anything interesting). More frustrating, in the end I didn’t feel confident that anyone heard or cared about what I’d written. Maybe this was the result of the style of the others participating, or the fact that I don’t know any of them well (I know Brad King, but not well enough to feel confident I know what he means all the time). Or maybe I’m just a whiny brat who thinks everyone should cheer when she says anything.

I could go back and restate the points I thought might have been missed. I won’t. All the important things have been said, and resaying them offers little return.

(Let me make clear that I think everyone on the list is a good person and a fine thinker, and no one was rude or insulting or anything along those lines. In fact, of mailing lists I’ve participated in, this is among the best. My issue is more with the technology, or maybe the protocol (or lack thereof) of discussions on a listserve.)

It’s too bad, this unpleasantness of online discussion, because email and the web on the whole offer many great tools to interact with people one might not otherwise meet or have the chance to talk to. But these tools still lack the ability to let us really see and absorb gestures, facial expressions, and nuances — little subtle changes and shifts, tiny sighs, small smiles. And so online tools require much more from the participants — extra effort to show that you’ve absorbed and acknowledge the other person’s viewpoint, for example. It’s hard stuff. Given a choice, and I’d rather sit down across from you and talk to you.