Oh, to Flickr Pro or Not to Flickr Pro
Sleep is wasted on...well, seemingly, everyone else. Third night of my cold not letting me sleep, so I am sitting on the kitchen floor of our rented house in Sunriver and taking care of many ignored tasks from the last few weeks.
One of which is my Flickr Pro account expiring and me not renewing it. From all of the outdoor trips, shindigs, 365 days project, et cetera, I believe there are thousands of photos of mine on Flickr now. However, once my Pro account expired at the end of December, only 200 of them were shown. Seemed silly to just have 200 photos shown, so I made them all private and started ignoring Flickr entirely. I spent way too much time on there anyhow, especially with so many brilliant YouTube videos to watch.
Also, I am a bit worried more and more about any sort of online privacy. Was talking with a friend a few days ago, and it really seems like the current generation of high school and college students have greatly abandoned much of my conventional boundaries of privacy. With even a basic Facebook profile, you can find oodles out about a person in a few minutes that simply took weeks or months to discover just ten years ago. That's a bit unnerving. I know more about Amy's daily life than Dan usually, all thanks to Facebook. Are we sharing just a bit too much? And, is there any chance of drawing a line, or is that just folly and should I merely accept this as the next, permanent development in an online world?
Curious questions. Already, when meeting a new person I stop at my first name. To give them my last name means that with a simple Google search they can find out quite a bit about me, my friends, and my life. This is especially problematic when dating. Flickr and Facebook contain many, many photos of me that, while definitively me in all ways, are perhaps not the second impression I wish to make. My personality is not one I want instantly known as it may be a bit jarring. Leads one to the belief that gradually learning about a person is far better than today's instantaneous absorption through digital information and media.
So, I am not sure if I will renew my Flickr account. Those photos are under my control as long as they are kept offline. And yet, I want to share them with friends. We had good times, look what we did! Climbed a mountain, went skiing, had a pie party, drove to the highest point in Portland to reenact Monty Python scenes. Also, Facebook has definitely made it easier to plan social events and keep track of friends who I may see only once a month, or even just once a year.
::drums fingers::
Let's not even try to discuss the problem of trusting the company that is hosting this information either. That's a whole other bag of worms.
One of which is my Flickr Pro account expiring and me not renewing it. From all of the outdoor trips, shindigs, 365 days project, et cetera, I believe there are thousands of photos of mine on Flickr now. However, once my Pro account expired at the end of December, only 200 of them were shown. Seemed silly to just have 200 photos shown, so I made them all private and started ignoring Flickr entirely. I spent way too much time on there anyhow, especially with so many brilliant YouTube videos to watch.
Also, I am a bit worried more and more about any sort of online privacy. Was talking with a friend a few days ago, and it really seems like the current generation of high school and college students have greatly abandoned much of my conventional boundaries of privacy. With even a basic Facebook profile, you can find oodles out about a person in a few minutes that simply took weeks or months to discover just ten years ago. That's a bit unnerving. I know more about Amy's daily life than Dan usually, all thanks to Facebook. Are we sharing just a bit too much? And, is there any chance of drawing a line, or is that just folly and should I merely accept this as the next, permanent development in an online world?
Curious questions. Already, when meeting a new person I stop at my first name. To give them my last name means that with a simple Google search they can find out quite a bit about me, my friends, and my life. This is especially problematic when dating. Flickr and Facebook contain many, many photos of me that, while definitively me in all ways, are perhaps not the second impression I wish to make. My personality is not one I want instantly known as it may be a bit jarring. Leads one to the belief that gradually learning about a person is far better than today's instantaneous absorption through digital information and media.
So, I am not sure if I will renew my Flickr account. Those photos are under my control as long as they are kept offline. And yet, I want to share them with friends. We had good times, look what we did! Climbed a mountain, went skiing, had a pie party, drove to the highest point in Portland to reenact Monty Python scenes. Also, Facebook has definitely made it easier to plan social events and keep track of friends who I may see only once a month, or even just once a year.
::drums fingers::
Let's not even try to discuss the problem of trusting the company that is hosting this information either. That's a whole other bag of worms.
– Posted: January 17, 2010, 06:49 am