You've been there for the moments. The road trip to end all road trips, the glorious and winless company softball team, the nearly disastrous yet somehow awesome family vacation.
Years ago, we'd capture snapshots of the time, send them off to the photo processor. Weed through the results. Maybe put them in an album for posterity.
Things are different, now. We can grab a piece of the time on demand, with all our digital tools at hand. And do we, ever. Today, many of us pile up the personal media we've created or captured in almost unmanageable quantities.
Photos remain a big part of the picture, of course, so instant and easy wherever we go. We thumb pictures into and out of our phones by the hundreds.
Add in mobile video. Audio. Text.
We gather all this media in real-time, then it goes into a folder somewhere in the cloud, perhaps just stored on a device or drive.
Some of the things that we find instantly sharable are pushed out onto our social media feeds.
But there, our full control over the scene is lost forever. In the interest of making sure all our friends see something, we hand over these moments to Silicon Valley shareholders.
Those best experiences become advertising fodder and creepy tracking data for companies we don't really know, and have no reason to trust.
Once it's pitched up to social media, we've no idea how our stuff will be displayed ten years from now, or to whom, or in what context. That'll be entirely up to companies and the companies who buy the companies.
"You can always access your own posts," they'll say, but the garbled account downloads they provide are nearly useless as a practical matter; not portable in the least.
So here we are in this impressive world where our media is everywhere at a touch. Much of it sits in a cloud gathering digital dust. The highlights are briefly presented to friends on the trendy social app of the era, then quickly disposed to obscurity. Meanwhile the personality traits of both creator and audience are systematically exploited for cash.
This can be better. It should be better.
You are yourself a Sequoia....
Stop and get acquainted with your big brethren.
~John Muir to Ralph Waldo Emerson, May 1871
Mackenzie Burke on the Giant Forest Trail, Sequoia National Park.
Morning snowfall, May 2017
Mackenzie Burke on the Giant Forest Trail, Sequoia National Park.
Morning snowfall, May 2017
Presenting and preserving your best experiences shouldn't require obediance to the profile harvesting machines of social media.
And whether your design skills are expert or novice, creating awesome shareable stories and visuals shouldn't require a computer programming background.
A better solution should:
- Leverage the full range of multimedia today
- Maintain all your rights to everything you produce, forever
- Take into consideration the value and usability of a permanent, personal archive that can be both digital and physical
Your completed story projects should be accessible and intact years from now, even decades from now, in their original format. No matter where technology goes, your content should remain alive, and just as it was originally envisioned.
Built by you. Owned by you. Available forever, to be shared when and where you choose.
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