Erik Bernhardsson

A better alternative already exists in the Ricoh GXR system, which doesn’t rely on adapters to fit M lenses but supports them ‘natively’ and has a proper manual focus solution.

“What’s replacing old media is social media. But the problem with the “like” media economy of Facebook and Twitter is that it doesn’t provide an economic model for journalists. "

I agree. Actually, I’m publishing an independent magazine and now that we finished the first issue we need a proper place on the internet to gather information about it that people can find easily.

The thing is neither of us has time to make a proper one as we both have other commitments and would rather focus on actually making content and communicating with potential readers.
For that reason we now use a tumblr as our website, with pages for more information, and the tumbling to add content that is interesting(at this point most is not original but curated reblogs).
It works just as well really, allows for any type of posting and can be done from a phone or tablet.

And has the added benefit of the content being able to spread in a way which no other network has.

We also have a Facebook Page but the reach of that is pretty much limited to people we already know.

I think you’re right on all points.

What I’m trying to get at though is not the Instagram of today but how Facebook wants Instagram to be in the future, and how it wants to use it to make people input the same type of content to Facebook that they do to Tumblr today.

The Open Graph which was supposed to do this is clearly not working, and is a feature made for companies, not users. Most find it annoying.

I think with Google, the problem is that they’re nerds. There’s some things that nobody in the whole companies seem to get and they can’t take a hint. Needs some right-brainers.

But I think the fundamental shift will be from a marketing/consumer culture to a “meaning and connection” culture this century. Facebook and Google will probably both die because of it, because of how they cling to the former.

I agree. Facebook or other social networks could essentially become the new ‘telephone’. I would definitely pay to be able to contact friends or family and share photos and thoughts with them, without risking that these same things including my identity be sold to companies looking to sell/fool me into buying things.

The direction that the web is developing is, as I see it, in a more personal and selective way. That is, choosing things that our friends recommends or things that connects with us, like some small bands, designers etc do on their blogs, but companies on FB fail miserably to do.
And that spells the end for marketing and advertising, and in turn, Google and these other companies of the early 2000s…

Turning ‘frictionless’ on it’s head… perfect! I agree, Facebook has made reading messy.

The fundamental problem with the Open Graph and Facebook’s building of an Internet within the Internet is that it’s not something that is wanted by the user. We’d love to have all things gathered in one place, just not the way Facebook wants to do it.

Facebook, as any person, is a product of its environment. The environment it lives in is one of consumerism and life-style marketing, which affects the decisions Facebook makes every day. How they monetize is based on that, marketing and selling of stuff, and from there it is decided what features to build out and how.
The Open Graph is good for Facebook as it pulls in both content(or at least links to it) into Facebook and users’ interactions with it. They haven’t considered what we feel about it, though.

It is spammy, invades our privacy and perhaps most important forces us to publicize our interests or thoughts when we don’t want to.

The business model of Facebook and other social networks will implicate all parts of it. Tumblr on the other hand, which is gaining huge amount of traffic and non-force interactions, is yet pretty much without a business model and have therefore not been trying to force things upon us.

I did a write up in the Forums about Facebook, Tumblr, and their meaning for creativity and content creation and sharing, and self-censorship.

Fully support this, however I think full abstinence might be counter-productive. I don’t see how it’s possible to do any work at all, especially within IT, without using the Internet in some way. You can’t really research blogs in the library, and we know that’s where all the good stuff comes from nowdays.

I personally have been without Internet access at home or at school for about 9 months now and I feel it’s been a great thing for me. Especially not having easy access to Facebook has been relieveing; no pressure to update my status or post pictures so people will see what an interesting life I have.
In general, it has made me a much more relaxed and socially confident person. It also made me more socially active and has made me read more books, and create more of my own works.

The reason I haven’t had Internet access is that I live in a very old house in Beijing which doesn’t have phone cables. I do go to cafés a lot though to work, and also I read RSS feeds on my phone, which has a 3g connection, so I’m not totally lost. But time spent in front of the computer has been reduced greatly, and it has even made me dislike computers in general. I can’t really use anything but a tablet or a phone without getting annoyed at the form factor.

“The human psyche is complex. We often live in our own minds rather than being present in the moment. Intangible thoughts have the power to limit our happiness and success in life. We therefore, become trapped by the limits we allow society to impose upon us. It is these seemingly ‘little things’, that become powerful inhibitors for human beings. Tanapol Kaewpring’s newest body of work gives form to these abstract challenges by using a curious glass cube in the natural and urban environment as a metaphor for the systems we are constrained by. These symbolic boxes can be physical such as a house and an apartment, as well as social frameworks of the family, religion, culture and politics.

Each cube is situated within specific environments, the beach, the forest, the desert and the city. Confined inside are elements such as fire, smoke, light and water. These forces of nature have the capacity for great change, growth and destruction and yet they are still able to be controlled by humanity. Even they have their limits."

My point is that image quality is besides the point. It doesn’t make or break ‘art’.

As I see it, Instragram and other softwares that produce good looking images without effort and these half-broken analog cameras that creates unintended effects are but two sides of the same coin. Neither has anything to do with creativity.

There is little meaning, no message behind either picture and if you’re asking whether they can be called art or not, I’d say no. Because art is always posing questions on the subject of the human condition. None of these images do that.