Happy New Year! Bit late but so are most of my blog posts!
I’ve been super busy of late and have been up to all sorts of things. None of which pertain to my lack of blog entries until you add them all up and realise I haven’t had much time to put words to digitalness.
But something is looming large that i feel i had to write about – along with most other tech/geeky folks out there. The mythical Apple Table/iSlate/iPad/whatever. If we are to believe the hype – which is pretty darn big – but all completely unsubstantiated this will be a game changer. A revolution in silicon. An end to all the worlds woes. And a lifeline for print. Really?
I’m not sure where I stand on it though. On the one hand I love gadgets and after having used my iPhone a lot over the past couple of years I know it is a super device that has helped make taking photos, keeping in contact, remote working & travelling easier. It is essential to what I do.
The thing that is at the same time exciting and scary is how the proposed/visualised/rumoured Tablet / iTunes version of electronic print media will hurt/hinder/help photographers & content producers as a whole. I can see the method in the medium – read a story on the latest UCI Mountain Bike World Cup or the Cape Epic and while you are reading intro and article you can tap references and download ’sidebars’ of the latest images, results, athlete profiles, videos, history, popups, interactive charts etc etc all while keeping your place in the main article.
As Marshall McLuhan said the medium is the message … basically how or where or on what you view the content dictates your response to it and how you react to it. Basically the actual content won’t have the profound effect on us as much as how it is delivered – think reading an article on a newspaper on a park bench or train and then watching the self same story on Fox News. But also think of the interaction between you the viewer/reader/consumer of the media and how it impacts you and how, if you could, read up on all related items as you wish. McLuhan also postulated that as we evolve and change in society due to our constant and eager thirst for more and more information we miss how the interaction with the content via the medium has changed us. And it is only later how we see this influence … think Television. At first it was basic, informative but as it’s power has grown it has spawned such blights on society as ‘Reality TV’ and this has shaped how we view such things as song, dance, desert islands and me time with a room full of strangers.
I think I’ve just derailed my train of thought there … basically what i am trying to say is the ability to consume large amounts of information is an important part of being human … but it is also a slippery slope as once you get a powerful tool to consume the knowledge you actually become less human. Social interaction comes through Twitter, Facebook, email and the like … I know this for a fact as I am as guilty as the next iPhone owner for sneaking in a Tweet here or quick check on Facebook to see what folks on the other side of the world are up to as I head to bed. To the exclusion of real honest human interaction.
Now we’re at the bottom of this particular roller coaster blog post … lets go back up!
The idea of a device that, even though we don’t know if it exists or not, could shake up old media in the way that the iPod and iTunes changed music is obviously very cool and exciting … imagine the possibilities to shape the message via the medium. Wow. Interactive features with images, video, charts, stats, related features all in one hand held device.
But something worries me and that is how do I bill for it? Or is it free like all the good stuff that is on the Internet? Will the new prime mover of photo sales be for the electronic medium as opposed to the print model of yore? Every now and then I use Google Image search to see where my photos are ending up and to be honest they are all over the place – a lot are obviously used legitimately, others not so much and others that fall into a grey area somewhere in between. But as i have I don’t even have the time to put down a couple of hundred words I sure can’t spend my days trawling the Internet to find every Joe Soap or Doña Fulana who has posted an image of mine. Maybe I should. Or maybe I should just dump them all in the new iTunes aggregator and get a cut.
Molly, who turns 3 in March, has an alter ego she calls Alice. When she gets up to mischief, Alice is around, or so she tells us. Maybe my alter ego wrote this … I call him Joe.
We have been riding a lot though which is always good … helps stave off the Bike Polar Disorder … check how much Tom has been riding ….
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