A friend of mine thinks she doesn’t photograph well because every expression she has is transitional.
In a sense, that’s true of everyone. When conscious, we are all constantly in motion, in transition.
Our brains do not filter information statically. It’s impossible to perceive how individual pieces comprise the whole of anything. We only think that we see everything in sharp clarity; in reality, we are simply unaware of our eyes shifting focus as our gaze flits from one object to the next.
It’s impossible to get a true sense of who someone is from one picture, or from the personae that they are confident enough to present for an anonymous public.
There’s a new kind of blog called a tumblr. Tumblr’s format is geared toward brevity. With a tumblog, it’s easy to post links, quotes, photographs, or other short media excerpts. Tumblr can also import feeds, which presents interesting aggregation possibilities.
I think tumblrs are neat, because I often have ideas that aren’t serious enough to warrant an in-depth analysis, but are still worth sharing. Metaphorically, I like the idea of having a way of looking and of being seen in a series of snapshots, rather than a posed portrait.
In some ways, meta-looking-glass-selfism has gone too far. My generation is the first group of people who have grown up saturated in new media and technology. In some ways, this saturation has proven to be beneficial. For example, when I volunteered at the library, attempting to teach older people how to use computers was frustrating to both the patrons and myself. People who have interacted with computers from a very young age intuitively understand how to use them in a way that older people simply do not.
Furthermore, the relative ease of global information dissemination has become a boon to activists. We have access to more information than we can possibly ingest in a lifetime. We can network and create worldwide communities based on shared ideology, rather than just proximity.
However, we are also addicted to media. Text messaging, social networking, blogging, and status updates erode my capacity to be patient and present in the moment. Furthermore, the anonymity of virtual interactions weakens the signal-to-noise ratio in online communities. It’s devastatingly easy to deny someone else’s humanity from the virtual comfort of one’s own space. It’s difficult to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of racist, sexist, homophobic propaganda metastasizing the Internet.
Squinting at the border where technology’s empowering and problematic aspects are juxtaposed produces no clear answers; the harder I look, the blurrier the line becomes.
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