Once again, going for a walk, looking at autumn gardens and colors. It won't be many days until all the foliage is fallen to ground and turning to brown and black.
Academy of Finland published an interesting article about research into photography - the history and current uses of photography. (Available here in Finnish.)
Nowadays photographs are a new kind of commodity, a messaging channel for social media sites to determine what kind of targeted ads to put on their pages. At the same time, the current uses of "snapshot photography" are based on old traditions - what is done now on social media sites used to be done with photography albums. Photographs were traded and exchanged, and photographs of friends and relatives were mixed with photographs of well-known people.
Nowadays companies such as Google and Facebook benefit greatly from people who search for and look at photographs - they can target their ads to people searching for various kinds of information, with great business results.
An interesting point raised by the article was the high price of digital photography. When looking at lifetime costs of taking and preserving photographs, the cost can be really high - and not only monetary, one should also look at issues such as privacy and identity. And fundamental rights of people - there are new kinds of unequalities arising because of social media.
This has rather interesting implications. Firstly, this blog is hosted on a site (Blogger) which is owned by Google. Secondly, I haven't published many photographs of people here - and for sure won't do so in the future either.
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