social media

Have you ever wondered how many photographs are being, or have been, taken on digital cameras?

Apparently, to date over 50 billion photos have been posted on Instagram, well over 250 billion on Facebook, about 30 to 40 million images PER DAY on Twitter (that is at least 10,950,000,000 per year), over 175 billion on Pinterest. On New Years Eve 2017, Whatsapp users posted 13 billion images plus 5 billion videos. This adds up to a huge number of pictures. But, not everyone uploads their digital pictures and videos to social media, or at least not every picture they have taken. So, this means that in addition to those which are uploaded, many, many digital images are being created every microsecond.

If they are not shared via the internet, what happens to the galaxy of photos and videos being created? Some are briefly looked at and then deleted. Others are kept to show selected acquaintances. A few are used to illustrate books and articles and some are printed on photographic paper.

One of the joys of old-fashioned film photography was the excitement of waiting to see how your photos or videos looked after the film was developed. Digital photography reduces the delay between snapping and seeing the result from several hours to a week (as it used to be) to a very few seconds. Yet, even with this almost instantaneous result, there is excitement to see what the image looks like.

The ease of use of cameras installed in mobile ‘phones has resulted in the huge numbers of pictures and videos being made. The numbers of images taken already and those yet to be taken must surely reaching that impossible to reach number, namely infinity!

During the last three months of 1963, while my father was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, I attended the university’s high school, the Lab School. While we were in Chicago, President John F Kennedy was assassinated.

I was put in the PreFreshman class with pupils who were one or two years older than me. Everyone was very kind and friendly towards me, and a bit curious about having a boy from England amongst them.

I remember being asked about some green plant that the British loved to eat. I had no idea what the questioner was talking about until I realised that he was referring to watercress. Another of my fellow students was surprised that the word ‘bloody’ was a swear word in British English.

I left the Lab School in December 1963 and, sadly, lost all contact with my lovely new school friends. In 1963, there was no Internet and international telephone calls were quite expensive. Hence, keeping up with people living far away was much more difficult than it is today.

Fifty six years later, in 2019, I made contact (via social media) with Steve, who remembered me from my brief stay at the Lab School. He remembered that I had introduced him to the hobby of train spotting. I do not recall that, but many years have passed since then.

A few days ago, Steve came to have dinner with us. I am not certain that either of us recognised each other after over half a century of separation, but that did not matter as Steve turned out to be a very congenial guest and we engaged in interesting conversations. We reminisced briefly about Chicago, but spent most of the evening discussing other topics.

Although, as already mentioned, I did not recognise Steve and barely recollected him, I felt a wave of pleasure catching up with the ever so distant past.

Photo by Leon Macapagal on Pexels.com

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