The photography blog 1000memories did some number crunching and found that Facebook has nearly 140 Billion photos in total at a rate of 200 million photos uploaded per day. That is nearly 10,000 times the size of the Library of Congress photography collection. Holy crap, check out the article here because the numbers are truly staggering.What does that mean though? Our archives, our history, is becoming digital more and more each day. Our photos have moved from physical albums to online ones, our records are either scanned or typed directly, our books are on non-existent bookshelves. And you know what? It has made us more present. We are more as a people.
Chances are, most of you did not build the house or were not the first person in your apartment. Have you ever looked up your residence in an old city directory? Seen the name of the person who lived there? Just a guy, right? A name on a piece of yellow paper in a dusty book.
Think about how our grandkids (or kids if you start getting busy now) will look that up.
You are your grandkid. You have the address of your home. You put that address into the ether and find a list of names of people who lived there. You pick a name. That name is on several social networking sites, but one in particular seems to be from around here. Sure enough, he lived in your house and there are pictures of a Halloween party tagged there. As you go through the pictures, vowing to clean up that corner a little better, you see a couple dressed as Jack and Jill making out. Her face is visible and tagged. Its your grandma. But Jack is most def not your grandpa. Ewwww.
Welcome to the future.