Okay, I'll admit that Flickr's fun. It's full of configurable options and basically feels cool. It makes one quickly feel like a part of a vast network of image makers and collectors. Click the screen image here to see 20 images in my recently uploaded Beautiful BC collection.Yesterday, I got a package from my dad. I had asked him to mail old slides to me. My mom used to take Kodachrome shots when we were on trips. For example, I wondered if he'd be able to find anything from our 1965 trip in a Volkswagon bus from New Hamsphire to Alaska. I really only recall the stories told by others as it was the year I started first grade. In fact, I believe I was a few days late for the start of classes as that's the only time my dad was able to arrange vacation time. The postman's delivery arrived with slides as well as other junk. There were quite a few fading paper prints too. Now, I'll have things to scan and include here over the next little while.
Perhaps this is why Flickr is so intriguing to me at the moment. In theory, a child born today can have a digital record of everyday life. There could be a universal image repository with tags for searching. It could grow to contain an entire lifetime of images and be easily accessible from any computer. My recently-arrived box full of yellowing parchment and dyes seems like such an anachronism.
(I should give my father some credit, instead of cushioning things with environmentally-unfriendly Styrofoam popcorn, he sent the items sandwiched between rolls of toilet paper. That's an added bonus that will keep on giving!)