I just installed iLife '09 on my personal mac. I am watching iPhoto's faces feature crunch through the pictures. Even though cheap consumer point-n-shoot digital cameras have the ability to pick out faces from an image, I am still astonished as I watch my computer do this. I haven't even gotten to the part where it starts to group faces together based on person. I have reached the point where technology appears to be magic.
Come to think of it, I see new magic all the time. It is good in that I love seeing the new opportunities and new ways this stuff can get used. I love seeing how a tool, when in the hands of many people, can end up being used in way not intended by its inventor. I frequently use the example of when narrative filmmaking jumped from just long, static shots of plays to using close ups and cross-cuts. Podcasting is another example. I don't think many (anyone?) were thinking of podcasting when personal media players came on the scene. It is not the invention of technology that moves me. It is how it makes us think differently. (Not a mac ad, really). How much of the manner in which I process my environment owes itself to the visual syntax of motion pictures? (Bolded as a question that I must elaborate on at a later date)
Along the lines of changing uses of technology:
As I think of blog-a-day challenges from the past, they seemed to focus on the mundanity of everyday life with a little splash of color to dress it up. These were cool. These were times when the blog life was new and sharing the mundane was almost an act of rebellion. It was done just because it could be done. And if you were doing it, you were part of the internet jet set. It was a secret alternate life as a blogger.
Well, the times change.
Now, with the twitters and facebooks, it is seemingly commonplace for people to share the details of their lives. And they are sharing it with people they know in the real world. And people are consuming it, people who have interest. It is a conversation. The blog is something else now. Strangely, what was once seen as a the most trivial penny-ante immediacy is now THE PLACE to reflect, THE PLACE to slow down. Twitter, facebook - They move at the speed of light. Blogs are where you write at length. This is isn't to say what once was considered superficial is now considered deep. It just that the wrong tool was being used. Facebook is a better tool for social connections and twitter is a better tool to share the RIGHT NOW. The blog is where it can all be sorted out.
This NY Times article talks of this same idea.
Blog-a-day meta info:
If it was not for the blog a day challenge. I would probably never post this as I do not feel I am expressing myself clearly at all, and am mostly rambling. Is this a good or bad thing?
Still getting the juices flowing.
I am only as good as my last blog post.
Any post I ever make is never really done ... it just is what it is. Perhaps writing like this will help you revisit some of these ideas for deeper and more meaningful thought down the line. I don't know, but I think taking the time to at least work to formulate some ideas is a good thing. Reading this post I didn't read a rambling wreck, I read the start to two or three good ideas. Keep going ... it is only day 2!