With cameras in phones, cheap video cameras, blogs, and anything else you can record your life with, we’re documenting our lives like no society ever has. Our days can be reported on, taped, podcasted, blogged, video blogged, micro blogged, photographed, commented on… all supposedly allowing us to live forever in the vast nexus of digital storage. (Though I hear Livejournal deletes your blog after a year of not logging in – so they can clear space for the living.)

But are we somehow taking away the specialness of life with all of this documentation? Does it cheapen our experiences to be able to dial up the video of them at a whim, relying on the value of our own memories?

Or

Do you think this is preferable, since you always have some touchstone to events that happened in your life? Rather than you mother’s scrapbook, full of photos taken on “special occasions,” do you like being able to call up a thought on a day you blogged back in 2003?

Well, I am not a blogger and nor do I wish to be, but it does seem that people are documenting their lives constantly, and I am okay with that, because I don’t have to read it if I don’t want to. If I ever did blog I would probably do it for myself as opposed to doing it so people will read it, more of a diary type thing, but as I said I don’t ever plan on doing that.

However, with two children I do photograph and video more than I would have ever thought possible thanks to my cell phone camera, my digital camera and my Flip. My mother used to drive me nuts by always wanting to take pictures when I was growing, and now I have turned into that person, but I have the advantage of being able to see those pictures or videos instantly to know if I want to keep or delete and I can send almost instantly to anyone I want. My mother may have developed those pictures once a year. I can have those pictures printed (virtually) and sent off in seconds.

People used to fear big brother was watching. Forget big brother, our entire society is eagerly waiting to capture any moment at the drop of a hat. And for some reason I am okay with that. One day we will be looking at this generation in great detail thanks to all of the blogs, images and video at our disposal and we will most likely say “What the hell were we thinking”

Brian Alig

People generally post on the Internet only what they are willing to share with the public. It is also quite common for people to filter their words and thoughts so only the most interesting and favorable information gets out. One way to think about it is that social media content producers are writing their autobiographies on the fly.

With people who become famous or renowned in their industry, a digital paper trail will serve as an excellent look into the lives of those individuals. For people who are not so lucky, the data will fade into obscurity along with the digital lives of billions of other average people.

As for affecting the specialness of life, I think having the ability to share a video of an event — or even an immediate recollection after an event — is favorable to relying on one’s memory and one’s ability to communicate to another person something that happened years ago. If anything, this will give people a better understanding and greater appreciation of what you had gone through.

Brian Shaler

It’s better by a long shot, but - like everything - it has its caveats. (You knew that was coming, right?)

Special moments are special regardless of whether or not they’re captured on film of any kind, and being so captured does not make them less so. The only “harm” inflicted by recording these moments is on our ability to get away with embellishing them the way feeble human memories typically do.

The memory of a child’s first steps is in no way less “special” because it was captured on film. Michael Phelps becoming the winning-est Olympian of all time is in no way lessened by the fact that it was captured by dozens of cameras in high definition, viewed by millions of people worldwide in real time, and viewable any time thereafter. The “vast nexus of digital storage” makes it possible to preserve these moments in a way that makes them less susceptible to being lost, and their being digital means it is far, far easier to preserve them exactly as they were recorded.

Some people have a love affair with printed paper, photographs, and other tactile means for recording human activity and/or production. I don’t buy that kind of sentimentality. The printed word’s value has nothing to do with it being “printed” - its value is intrinsic. A photograph lost in a fire has no value relative to a high quality scan of it stored in the cloud, where it can be recalled on demand; where companies far better at the task see to it that it is always there, ready.

I mentioned caveats, and in my opinion the problem with the ubiquity of recording devices is that they get us far too comfortable with exposing our private lives. The average person has no idea they’re caught on camera dozens - sometimes hundreds - of times a day. We’ve regressed into a society where privacy is no longer a right, but a privilege, and where precious few understand how to properly respond to any question that begins with, “If you’ve got nothing to hide…”

Joseph Jaramillo

The idea of capturing the moments of your life is and will always be special. But as a society I believe we are going a little overboard with allowing other people to access those moments. Any sense of privacy is being lost and sadly I don’t see that diminishing anytime soon.

Roger Hurni

That’s a good question you raise.

I had a little talk about something similar a couple days ago where it was asked if access to all this information makes us less intelligent? Basically meaning that instead of learning anything you can look it up on Google. While I understand the point I don’t believe so, in ways. Take for instance if you lose your phone. How many phone numbers of friends/family are you going to remember? Probably none as you’ve never really seen them before. But when I was a kid, I knew every friends numbers in my head because I didn’t have a cell phone to save them in.

At the same time I believe it intelligent to be able to know how/where to find anything when needed. That helps me learn.

As for the archiving of your life.
I see the specialness of life in the ability to index all that information and advance our quality of life. People have been indexing information with hieroglyphs and stories and pictures (yearbooks) ever since they could and all this digital media is just the next step in all that. … and yet we still have our memories :)

Technology helps us to live longer, cure diseases, and learn more about anything (not counting budgets or politics).

Chuck Reynolds

I do believe that ages ago people may have recorded their thoughts through diaries and journals more than people do today. They had less technological distractions, and more time to reflect on life. Fast forward to today, technology is making it easy and fun to record and share our lives with multimedia.

I don’t feel that ease of creation and sharing cheapens our imagination or the experiences recorded. I look at photos from my childhood and it helps me remember other things about a particular vacation which was NOT recorded on film, yet having a photo jars my memory about that era and helps “prove” to my brain that I was there and did that thing. Other memories follow. When we go through photos with our children they start talking about other things from the photos.

A problem with extreme documentation of our lives is we may miss out on life right now, while trying to create the “now” memories. Spending 12 hours glued to ustream.tv watching a someone life stream their (also) normal life while ignoring your own friends and family means that you are missing out on your own life. If something that great happens in a life feed, believe me, you can always see the Flickr photos, blog posts or tweets about it the next day.

As a photographer I’ve been guilty of dragging my pro gear to the park to photograph my kids playing. A ten minute lighting setup and a few thousand dollars of photo gear sitting on the ground is not very conducive to me playing with my kids and being a dad. A while back I found a website called, “UnPhotographable” by photographer Michael David Murphy. He describes events which he missed with his camera or which he chose to not photograph while truly appreciating the moment. I was never much into poetry, yet as a photographer I understand capturing a split second in time which tells a powerful story.

Since finding Michael’s blog, I’ve made a conscious efforts to take in some moments and cherish them in my mind. A cell phone photo (or just a memory) of my happy kids will will always trump a very well lit photo of a 5 year old wishing his dad would chase him around the park.

Adam Nollmeyer
Phoenix Photographer

I must say, the main reason I chose this topic for the question this week is that I just sold my Flip Video camera. It was neat for a while, but I realized as I was strolling through Jerome with my girlfriend that I wasn’t really being in the moment - I was sacrificing that moment so that I could point and click. What’s more, looking at the videos the next day, just as Adam described the YouTube example, the videos weren’t worth missing the moment of really “being there.”

How much more of our lives are lost like that? Frankly, I don’t mind killing time that way: I’m waiting for the movie to start, so I fire off a quick text to Brightkite and I’m on with my life.

For things I actually want to remember, though, I find all this documentation replaces my chance at a memory with a digital scrapbook. And that scrapbook is a pale imitation of having lived a life. The more we do this, the more I fear we won’t even care. We’ll be a population of documentarians with nothing worthy of documenting.

Eric Reid

I would answer “No” and “Yes”.

No – For those entering the fray of social media, blogs, etc. Too much is really not enough. You have to find out what types of content is truly sticky.

Yes – After you have been at it for a while, a good blogger/poster/tweeter understands the types of content which her audience really respond too. In other words, they develop a good gauge for what is interesting, compelling and provocative and subsequently a great content filter. Hint: If it doesn’t elicit further conversation, comments, replies or the occasional “thanks for your post”, then try a different approach. Unfortunately, some sources of social media content just tend to continually create the same kinds of content over and over and expect different results. I think there may be a term that defines that kind of behavior…

Chris Sietsema

Blenders, taxes, milk and urinals… not exactly the products you would expect to take off in a social media campaign. But, when creative ideas merge with traditionally “boring” products, they can become social media hits. According to a recent article, when the right marketing idea, social media and a little luck meet, your “boring” product can become the next Internet sensation. So, the next time you give up on marketing your average product, think outside of the box, go to YouTube and let the marketing magic begin.

Looking for more comprehensive Olympic coverage? Check out Yahoo! Sports. With an entire section of their Sports site dedicated to the Beijing Olympics (Opening Ceremonies are Friday, August 8th), you can easily discover content by sport, country, athlete, schedule, medal count and current news (including the U.S. cyclists recently emerging from their plane in face masks), as well as local interest stories focused on the residents and local attractions that gives China its unique cultural flavor.

Yahoo took the opportunity to expand on simply providing Olympic statistics for visitors to follow, which is what some of their competitors have done. Yahoo instead created a one-stop shop for everything Olympics related, as well as delving into the Chinese culture and helping to boost Chinese tourism.

After examining the site, here is a list of my Top 5 Places to visit on Yahoo Sports! Olympics:

1. Homepage. The homepage is easy to navigate and is visually appealing. Here you can search for Olympic coverage, watch the countdown, and easily search through videos, headlines and more. Also here is the My Olympic Watchlist, located on the right of the homepage. Here you can add only the sports you want to be updated on, and you’ll get news, photos, videos, etc. updated throughout the Olympics.

2. The interactive Torch Tracker map. See the journey of where the torch started and where it’s been. Click on the Animate Route button on the right to see the full journey around the world.

3. Summer Games Trivia. Test your Olympic trivia knowledge and try to catch, Shakeyerbooty from Djibouti, holding first place with 25,504 points. Good Luck!

4. Get your 2008 games coverage from your mobile phone. Simply select your country, enter in your mobile phone number, and presto! You’ll have all the Olympics updates to your phone. Or you can log on to m.yahoo.com/2008games in your mobile browser.

5. Unique to Yahoo is how they cater to the International audience. Yahoo offers complete coverage in 12 other countries through local Yahoo sites, including Yahoo Mexico Deportes, Taiwan and France.

So check into Yahoo throughout the Beijing Olympics and learn more than just the stats.

One of the things I always advise people on when they, “want to get into social media” is to consider what they have on hand to share. If you have a lot of photos of what you do, or videos, or even slide presentations, you can share them on places like YouTube or Flickr or Slideshare.

The TV show “SwingTown” knows this. At the end of their show, there is a call to listen to the music from the show at their Last.FM page - a place designated for people to pick their favorite music, and share it through personal radio stations.

These days, “period piece” only means any time during the last 50 years so you can sell a soundtrack. It makes sense, then, that they would put together a place online - here through Last.FM where you can get that music. It’s a 70s show. What do they have on hand? A lot of episodes with music rights to Earth, Wind and Fire and The Little River Band. So it’s a great use of Last.FM, other users can find value in it, and it will get them to be more interested in the show.

So this is a great example of finding the right place for what you already have to share.

Recently Volkswagon has been running a new ad campaign with the tag “Das Auto.” The ads feature a classic 1964 black VW Beetle named Max who in his quirky German accent interviews celebrities like Heidi Klum and David Hasselhoff.
VW has always been known for edgy and creative advertising. Heck, they pretty much single-handedly changed modern advertising with their “Lemon” ad.
I love the idea of the car interviewing celebs in a talk-show format complete with a band of weirdos playing on the side. And the banter between the characters is funny enough to make me stop my DVR so for pure entertainment value I would give these ads an “A.”

BUT. There are a couple things about the ad that make me stop and say “Really?” First, the fact they are using an old car. On the one hand I get it. It’s an icon that represents the whole VW brand and a newer Beetle wouldn’t have the same quirk factor. But is that the best way to sell new cars? To show the old cars? It’s like when a Chevy ad featured their old muscle cars next to their new cars. The new cars aren’t as cool. Don’t remind people how cool your cars used to be if they’re not cooler now! I kinda feel VW runs the risk of doing the same with Max.

Second, the fact they are using Das Auto (The Car) and saying it’s all about “what the people want.” While on the surface it seems okay and perhaps enough time has gone by but have we forgotten that VW was invented because Hitler commissioned Porsche to build something “for the people?” (side note: some say Hitler named the Beetle too.) Bringing the concept back to this seems a little creepy to me particularly when you are using the classic Beetle.

So overall I would say these ads, while not Volkswagon’s best, they’re still worth watching. Check them out here: http://www.volksbloggin.com/2008/04/16/das-auto-volkswagen-advertising-strikes-again/
I would have done a YouTube link but I think it’s funny that this site is called Volksbloggin!