The Social Photo
The article talks about how photography as a new medium had a similar history and change to how we see the world as social media has. We are similarly unsure about how it effects the way we view and interact with society because of how new it is. It speaks to how photography in the social media context has switched from being something too special to being an everyday image that we use to document our lives moment to moment, as both communication, and a media object. Combined this makes social photography, both in a professional sense, but more-so in the amateur photographers that are now creating this new type of photo and interaction with the world that didn’t use to exist and it has become one of culture, memory, and expression.
What might the evolution of the social photo look like in the coming age of surveillance awareness?
What can’t we measure…?
I think at its core this talk accentuates that metrics dont always equal accuracy. Data is not always reality. And sometimes it leaves out the important information. I really enjoyed the example of the sex tracker because it really emphasized this point. This tracker can’t measure love, and I’d say it cant measure satisfaction, but it does give data. I took away something important which is the fact that data is not always 100% accurate. My phone is giving me a metric that is guessed and knowing that variable is important to whether or not that data is actually important or useful. Measurements aren’t always helpful and aren’t always necessary.
What do metrics want?
As the article puts it, this piece is about the influence of metrics on our lives, analyzing it through the lens of capitalism influencing our worth as humans and how facebook specifically is made to continue this influence. On the first hand, the article explains that our personal worth is defined by social interaction which I am one to agree with. Often times our lives are defined by outside sources, whether that be society as a whole, or whether or not one specific person likes us landing us a job. So much is out of our control and influenced by how good we are at networking, making friends, political plays even outside of politics. If we do all these things correctly, know the right person, do the right thing at the right time, we can be successful. I think this is how we want more, because it reduces our likelihood of missing out on an opportunity. This is how facebook plays into our minds, as the article states, our feeds our empty without having interaction with our friends or pages. As we gain friends we gain more content. And as we connect with more people our facebook also becomes a reflection of our social lives. One can look at our page and see who we are, which includes possible new opportunities. Facebook can be used as a social platform but also as one of advertising and the cycle continues with more reinforcement and engagement this can be money, friends, content but in the end it is just more of what our brains want and what the system wants.