Who can view this blog?
Just about everyone
Anyone can read this blog. That means, actually, anyone in the entire world who has a connection to the internet. I hope that the entire world will do so.
This is a big deal. Astronauts in the Space Station can read it. People in Central Asia, in China, up in the Andes in Peru, and people on remote islands in the Pacific. Villagers in remote parts of the arctic regions can read it. The internet is now pretty much everywhere, especially now that there are so many satellites are orbiting the earth.
It used to be really hard to communicate, and all this is very new to us old relics. As a child in the 1950’s, I listened intently to a short wave radio. Receiving Radio Moscow, programs from the BBC, powerful short wave stations in South America, Radio Australia — all this seemed thrilling. Now, we get all of this on our computers.
It all happened in an amazingly short time. Here’s an example: There are photographers who work in archaic photo processes such as platinum, gravure, gum-bichromate prints, cyanotype, carbon, etc., as well as some who actually have invented new media. The old processes enjoyed a lot of popularity in the latter half of the 19th century and into the 1920s. Some persisted even a bit longer. Then, they fell victim to the relatively straightforward and readily available silver-based processes that most of us know. Silver processes are more convenient, but the older processes had other qualities which provided other visual and tactile (look up the term “haptic”) possibilities. Some artists are attracted to these media because they find them beautiful, historically fascinating, or whatever.
It must have been around 1993; I was participating in a mailing list group online called “alternative photographic processes”. This was a small group of very congenial folk who kept up a lively conversation about what they were doing. We all appreciated the opportunity to talk things over. Prior to the formation of this group, for which we had to thank the new “internet”, each of us had felt pretty isolated. We never dreamed there were others doing these strange and abandoned processes. People we had only known through rumor suddenly appeared and were amazingly available.
We weren’t really prepared for what was about to happen. AOL joined the internet. Suddenly, there were hundreds of people communicating on our list. They were all over the world. People in Singapore and Spain doing Bromoil? Platinum in Hong Kong? And the nature of the group changed, overnight, from a highly cooperative and congenial community, to one that was highly competitive and often even downright hostile. Fights (“flame wars”)broke out online. People who were overly aggressive were expelled by popular vote. Others might be expelled for reasons that weren’t very rational. It got downright nasty. On the other side, though, there were lots of people now, and they started getting together, in Bath, England, in Lisbon, Portugal, in New Mexico. It got so unpleasant that I dropped; not that it wasn’t still interesting and worthwhile, but I was too busy to give time to something that involved so much politics. I haven’t been back, but some of the old group are still there, and despite the rivalries, a lot of good has come from it. I learned a great deal from this experience.
One thing I learned was how important it is to be thoughtful and courteous online, and the potential gravity of failing to be so.
So, we have here a very powerful tool. In using it, the fact that what we do here is wide open to the view of the entire wired world must affect the way we present ourselves. It raises the stakes. When you feel inclined to post a snapshot of your dog, for example, it might give pause… Who’s going to see this? Well, possibly native people above the arctic circle may see it, for whom the dog, historically, has a very different meaning (even though, today, they are more likely to get around on a snowmobile). People living in yurts in Central Asia can view it. High in the Andes, people may be looking at your pictures, even if they can’t read the text — but don’t count on that; all over the world, more people use English as a language to communicate across linguistic barriers. Astronauts in space can view your photographs, as well as the entire small population of the continent we call Antarctica, and those, as well, who live on remote islands thousands of miles from any continent.
Sobering? I don’t mean to frighten you; just read what is on the many thousands of blogs that are online already. I understand that many thousands of new ones come online every day. Much of it (probably most of it) is not particularly impressive. Often, it is quite personal and modest in its ambitions, but also, there is a lot of truly serious or otherwise worthwhile material “en blog”.
