Image Culture: Initial Response to Rosen

When I was much younger, I was obsessed with the movie Fairy Tale, which is based on the true story of two girls who claimed to have taken the first photographic proof of the existence of fairies in 1917. In real life, the girls eventually admit that the photos were falsified. When I found out the truth, I was as crushed as the public in London at the time must have been. I hadn't yet reached the state of cynical disbelief towards photos that Rosen describes in her essay. Although the photos were false, the story clearly demonstrates Rosen's point about how powerful an influence photography can be. Thus far, Rosen's theories about the way that image influences culture seem valid, and I'm intrigued to see how she supports them through the rest of her writing.

McLuhan's Tetrad: Photo Sharing on Facebook

Enhancements:

• Ability to share information about social events, family, etc quickly and easily.
• Allows sharing of artwork, projects, and other personal work without necessitating a separate web source.
• Photo albums allow photos from the past to be stored for future reference and continued viewing.
• Photo sharing on the news feed lets pictures be shared in the moment:
  -Cell phone uploads
• Lets family members and friends keep in touch over distances in a more meaningful way
  -pictures bring a better perspective into the lives of loved ones.
  -if someone had to miss an event, they still get to enjoy viewing the pictures.

Reversals:

• Oversharing-overload of repetitive and irrelevant information, especially on the news feed:
  -i.e. Pictures of Justin Bieber's new haircut.
  -Rather than carefully selecting what gets shown to the world, people take advantage of ease that facebook presents and upload all photos from everything.
• Privacy:
  -Misuse of privacy features sometimes results in photos that end up in the wrong hands.
  -You have no way of keep track of who has your photos. Something uploaded once might circulate on the internet forever or end up on a strangers computer without your knowledge.
• The "if there aren't pictures of it on facebook, it must not have actually happened" mentality:
  -photo sharing sometimes becomes a way to validate events, parties, etc, to the extent that the pictures that exist on facebook prove that the fun really ever took place.

Retrievals:

• "Village" mentality:
  -the ease of sharing information is like chatting with your neighbor over a back fence and showing them pictures from your wallet.
• Polaroid:
  -instant gratification, casual, mostly utilized for social purposes.
• Art galleries:
  -photo sharing allows people to browse your work as though they were actually standing in front of it.

Obsolesces:

• The way that photos used to be saved and shared:
  -Physical photo albums, scrapbooks
  -Social gatherings that included sharing pictures
• Traveling in order to stay in touch with family and friends:
  -when photos of your nieces and nephews are so readily available on facebook, the impetus to go see them in person in order to feel in touch with their lives might be less compelling.
• Other methods of photo sharing or storage: Photobucket, Flikr, email, etc. Facebook allows users to keep everything in one place.

Connectivity

While my brother Andrew and I were both still young enough to be concerned with spelling grades, rather than MLA citations, while the life expectancy of our hand-caught, bucket-tamed tadpoles was of more concern than that of our relationships, while the tooth fairy still left notes in strangely familiar handwriting under our pillows, I came to realize that he and I share a somewhat uncommon bond. We're close, and that is how it has been for almost my entire life. After he left home to attend college in New Mexico, several states away, it was difficult to adjust to the sudden distance between us. Over time, however, we've learned to manage staying in touch through variety of methods. For a long time, those methods did not include facebook. He chose to delete his about a year after moving away from home, and has only recently decided to rejoin. Upon his return, Andrew published a veritable facebook manifesto via status update. This manifesto outlines his philosophy toward the use of social networking, and details the parameters with which he aims to use it. His manifesto contains the following clause:

"In using facebook, I will attempt to combat the tendency towards technological thinking, the symptoms of which we find in the loss of patient thinking, real listening, slow reading, and honest engagement with the physical universe."

I really admire the sentiment evident in this part of Andrew's declaration, and I think that his position towards facebook use is laudable. Although an easy source of connectivity, facebook can easily become an overwhelming void that lacks anything meaningful but remains the cornerstone of communication. According to McLuhan,

"In his amusement born of rational detachment of his own situation, Poe's mariner in 'The Descent into the Maelstrom' staved off disaster by understanding the action of the whirlpool. His insight offers a possible stratagem for understanding our predicament, our electrically-configured whirl. " (McLuhan 150)

Facebook can easily become such a whirlpool. If we do not remain objective, we can become caught up in the rapidity of its ideas and the deceptively easy method it offers to stay in touch. Without a conscious effort, facebook can quickly spin its way into a maelstrom of information that leaves the viewer with a false sense of fulfillment. However, as noted by McLuhan, if we can remain cognizant of the ease with which facebook leads to superficial connections, then we may stave off the shallowness and instead seek significant links with those we consider to be our friends, in the truest sense of the word.