We live in an amazing age, once we factor out 8+ percent unemployment. After that, it's easy to see what an amazing age this is.
We can sit in coffee shops or restaurants and stare blankly into laptops and handheld devices--many ironically called "smart" phones--and argue endlessly and often stupidly on the Internet about all manner of pointless topics. That's how amazing this age is.
And we can take digital pictures and videos and post them instantly online, with almost 99 percent of the people uploading those files completely oblivious to the fact they're basically forfeiting all their copyrights to their "intellectual" property. That's AMAZING!
Media organizations around the world shamelessly and urgently ask people to send in their stories, images and videos online about breaking news stories, and millions upon millions of people do exactly that, and they never see a dime, while the media organizations do surprisingly well for themselves using all that freely donated content. AMAZING!
And people post incredibly embarrassing and sometimes incriminating--Anthony Wiener anyone?--images and videos of themselves, which would have been considered unthinkable just ten years ago. I'm somewhat guilty of this, I'll admit. Back in 2004, I posted a mostly anonymous image of my exposed posterior, which has since been Photoshopped in amusing ways a couple dozen times over the years and still pops up online in unexpected ways. I'll leave it up to you to find it if you're so inclined. Trust me, it's AMAZING!
Now, my bare behind picture is pretty tame by today's standards. People today can be downright stupid--yet AMAZING--when it comes to uploading images and videos. Consider a July 19 Associated Press article out of Mayfield Heights, Ohio, which said "Burger King says three workers were fired after a photo posted online appeared to show an employee stepping on lettuce in bins at a northwest Ohio restaurant."
The real AMAZING thing about the story, aside from the workers' complete stupidity, was that the photo itself would have been completely anonymous, except "GPS data embedded in the photo led to the restaurant." Am I the only person somewhat terrified to learn GPS data is embedded in digital images taken with smart phones?
So, remember, we live in an AMAZING age, even though we can apparently be accurately tracked to an astonishing degree thanks to all the AMAZING things we carry around with us.
Posted by Ryan at July 19, 2012 12:23 PM | TrackBack
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