Lost in translation...
This is one of my favorite pictures from Australia. It may not deserve a pulitzer, but the story behind it is great. This is from my 'spring break' trip that I took in October where we camped on the largest sand island in the world. We had just setting up camp and were off to play touch football on the beach. I love the colors, and can almost feel the cool sand on my feet when I look at it. I think it says a lot about me because I love the outdoors, adore the beach and worship sunsets. All of this while I'm in a different country, learning about new cultures and making new friends. It was perfection.
Perfection may be what I call this picture, but what would you call it? If i tagged this photo on Flickr as 'perfection' anyone looking for anything remotely related to the definition of perfection may wonder what the heck this odd shot of some girl on a beach is doing under that tag. 'Folksonomy' on Flickr and Google can take a picture, once thought to be worth 1000 words, and reduce it down to one or two words. Anyone that has done a Google search for something rather obscure knows just how frustrating it can be to look up something like "porkchops" and come up with some random teenagers blog.
In relation to Cyberliteracy, blogging, and tagging, language as we know it is evolving before our eyes. My mom has finally figured out what I mean when I write "btw" in my emails and has started shortening things herself when she texts me. It has taken her a while to get used to the new 'cyber lingo' while I on the other hand pretty much grew up with it. I am not certain who is at the disadvantage in this situation. She has no problem writing formal letters and emails while I on the other hand write most of my 'important' emails in Word just to make certain that I don't have any stupid spelling errors. If my grasp on proper English has slipped so much, I wonder how my little brothers will fare. I hope that future generations will still be taught the proper way of writing, and cringe every time something like "lol" is added to the dictionary.
Comments
Great photo. It's nice when a photo can provide so many wonderful memories. I think you captured your day in the photo. Thanks for sharing.
Mike
Posted by: md2506 | January 26, 2007 08:01 PM
I think you hit it on the nose with your example about your mom-daughter communication. There is this changing culture in which speed and convenience have replaced sincerity and accuracy as leading values in everyday communication. New generations are getting more and more used to using shortcuts and informality in their contact with each other and it can be rather out of place when, for example, there is an age difference (like between your mom and you). Though, like in your post, older people can be exposed to these new ways of text communication, they may never be fully accepted by the world at large. Kids these days...
Posted by: Andrew | January 28, 2007 08:28 PM
I liked your comment about how search engines on the internet can sum up a picture in one or two words. I thought that was very insightful. I also think that the future generations will probably be more relient on spell checkers and other software that would help them write formal letters and papers. I think that they will be more dependent on software that will correct errors for them and in a way, that's really sad. I guess that's when schoolboards would need to step in and improve the education system so that kids would know how to write well without the aid of a spell checker.
Posted by: Natalya Goncharova | January 28, 2007 09:27 PM
This is a great photo to be described as "perfection". I feel like it is so hard many times when we tag things to capture what we want to say in one word- a picture is worth a thousand words- and by tagging photos with one word, it takes away from what we really want the picture to stand for.
Beautiful picutre however
Posted by: Kelly | January 28, 2007 10:33 PM