m e g a p e r l s

Photo: Alf Johansson via Gruppo F

In many ways the English speaking world seems overrepresented in today’s media. I am reading more about the great American photographers of the 20th century than others, just because I am frequenting a lot of English-speaking web sites. A lot of news are also based on English-speaking research, who often - quite obviously - have not bothered to conduct work in non-English speaking areas of the world (which is why you see a lot of references to US or UK in English language news). This acts as a filter omitting a lot of good material that’s out there. Since the mainstream on the net is in English, I think a lot of quality material is not readily picked up. Just my feeling anyway. This is more of a message to self: if you are multilingual, don’t forget to balance with trying to look at the other material as well. If you are not, just bear in mind that the material you have access to is just a subset of the whole, although you are often led to believe that it is not.

I picked up this cam cheaply at a local recycle shop. Not sure yet what to do with it though.

I haven’t figured it out fully yet, but the whole ‘new web’ is a disappointment for me. That really surprised me as I have always been a strong proponent of the net bringing people together. Something does not seem right and I have not found anyone articulating it nicely as of yet. Somewhere else it was said that we may be in the age group of becoming grumpy old man, but I don’t really think so. Calling somone grumpy because he is questioning the world around us is like accusing someone of being unpatriotic when criticising the government etc. It is a cheap deflection.

So what is my problem with the new web? Firstly what bothers me is the pointlessness of it all. These are platforms for people to publish their stuff and then find like-minded people. But as we have seen there is always someone somewhere that will say “great” to whatever you do or will find you interesting. Since that is a given - that there is always someone somewhere who is interested in you or what you do - the end result, their feedback and your product, is totally irrelevant and value-free. Unless you are just in for the gratification that such feedback will give you, which in the age of uncertainties is a strong attraction. Which is why I think that the people who came up with the platforms are very smart as they cater for an obvious need, best compared to the need for Jerry Springer and consorts. Any demand is bound to be supplied to.

Several years back when weblogging was growing in popularity, we already knew that eventually any site would attract like-minded people who are unlikely to disagree with you. The end result would be that you could rest assured that you had said something ‘right’, you stated some sort of truth because of course if other people do agree it must be right.

Then, secondly, we face a lot more volume, as it has been already stated, but also more quality material in absolute terms. Unfortunately it has become a needle in a haystack and I for one have given up bothering to go through it as the benefits of finding something of value are not proportionate to the effort.

Lastly it has become obvious that the platforms who make this happen are just in it to enable fairly cheap gratification of its members, but no real increase in value to the audience. You may think differently about this if you’re a teenager with more time to kill than you’d wish, I suppose.

I will get more interested again when we will see more people are competent and authoritative to talk about the subject, better editing and negative consequences if failing to do so, a clear thought process behind what is being said and why and based on what information. At the moment it is far too much of “everyone is entitled to their own facts”, as it was referred to elsewhere. The Tyranny of Popular Culture , or in this case popular opinion, is what will be the consequence.

I’ll be better spending less time online with any ‘community’ (a lie really, as they may be interested in you but never really care for you as a real community would do) and concentrate on my own things.

Hong Kong, by megaperls.

A fascinating place.

Not sure what this is about exactly, I assume pictures taken of Ginza over the decades. Ginza is probably one of the most photographically fertile places on this planet so anything like this would be worth seeing.

I was surprised to learn that John Sexton bought my QuickChange. I had only read an interview with him in the last issue of LensWork.