There's an idea that I've been kicking around for a few years now, and I think it needs a name. I've enjoyed many a long conversation with friend and former colleague, Aaron Straup Cope, and others about it, and continue to return to it. I've written around it for a while now.
Perhaps I'm contradicting myself a little here, talking about the good-faith effort the company made to warn people their photos were about to be destroyed. And perhaps I'm naive for assuming that any corporation could or should take responsibility for media that becomes something resembling an orphan work if it gathers dust (without social attention) on some hard drive somewhere.
But, the challenge remains. How do we keep all this stuff? How do individuals keep all their digital stuff? How do we archive networked media? How do we represent an object's position in a social network, describing all its interconnections and multi-faceted metadata? How should host corporations be involved?
I have a slide I used in a few presentations I gave about Flickr, to help explain this concept of the "networked media object". It's a lovely photo of my Mum and Dad in Tofino at my brother's wedding.
I use it to illustrate how it has a place in a variety of different networks: it's tagged with mum, dad, tofino, family, oates, myparents, holga, holga120. It's in 2 of my sets, and 2 Flickr groups. It's on a map, and 2 of my Flickr contacts have left comments, and 2 people have added it to their favourites. This thing does not live in a shoebox. It's buoyant.
What attributes of the network can we exploit or inhabit to help protect our media, and the media of our friends?
- (dis)ambiguity, April 2008
- Registering Interest in Preservation, April 2009
- Clasmic, December 2010
Perhaps I'm contradicting myself a little here, talking about the good-faith effort the company made to warn people their photos were about to be destroyed. And perhaps I'm naive for assuming that any corporation could or should take responsibility for media that becomes something resembling an orphan work if it gathers dust (without social attention) on some hard drive somewhere.
But, the challenge remains. How do we keep all this stuff? How do individuals keep all their digital stuff? How do we archive networked media? How do we represent an object's position in a social network, describing all its interconnections and multi-faceted metadata? How should host corporations be involved?
I have a slide I used in a few presentations I gave about Flickr, to help explain this concept of the "networked media object". It's a lovely photo of my Mum and Dad in Tofino at my brother's wedding.
I use it to illustrate how it has a place in a variety of different networks: it's tagged with mum, dad, tofino, family, oates, myparents, holga, holga120. It's in 2 of my sets, and 2 Flickr groups. It's on a map, and 2 of my Flickr contacts have left comments, and 2 people have added it to their favourites. This thing does not live in a shoebox. It's buoyant.
What attributes of the network can we exploit or inhabit to help protect our media, and the media of our friends?