I suppose that most of you have a cell phone able to take pictures, a computer running a recent version of its OS, a google, twitter or facebook account, etc... Then you have probably noticed the evolution of the use of photography in recent times. It seems that every newer iteration of anything pushes in the same direction. As a user of anything connected, the future (and even the present) seems to be that:
-one has numerous "friends" on so-called "social" internet servers
-one takes pictures or short movies all the time
-one feeds the device software all the time information about what one does, the exact place where one is (via GPS), what one's friends do and who they are (for face recognition), so that pictures can be tagged with keywords
-one keeps one's pictures online in some kind of cloud where the "friends" can also see them.
In exchange, we are supposed to gain convenience (I think). Apparently, the device one takes in one's pocket all the time is supposed to learn our habits and uses and react accordingly. For example, it should be able to give us better answer to our queries, find out who "Tom" is if I say "enter an appointment with Tom tomorrow evening" and even the time in the evening that is convenient to Tom and me. It is supposed to ring just in time for the appointment, earlier if there is a traffic jam, because it knows where I am at any moment, what car I drive and what route I'll take. That if I would drive a car in Munich, of course.
I have never used these systems to their full potential. When they first appeared, I had already been using the Internet for years and I was set up with other systems. I did not find a compelling reason to change at the time.
What is your experience? Do you use these systems? Do you find that they hold their promises?
