The Biggest Workspace of Them All

In my post about workspace not workflow, I omitted the biggest workspace, the all pervasive, everywhere at once internet, now often just referred to as the cloud. This oversight may be because I am still uncertain what it has to offer, even what it is? Rather than being on uniform and extensive place, it is a mismatch of different services, formats and connections.

So Why even put stuff there? Well the ease of exchange and sharing is wonderful and services like drop box make it very easy, not to forget email which is over 20 years old now.The other reason often suggested is that social media can be a great way to expose your work to others. In fact all I see is a pervasive pressure to go viral and become an overnight celebrity, that drives a lot of appallingly bad content. So much of what is on offer is boringly the same copy-cat, look at me stuff (eg rise of selfies and LOLcats, need I say more). I am starting to firmly believe it is ok to share what you are working on (as in provenance) your thought and methods and some of your works, but it is more important to be honest in following your creativity (ie don’t worry about the crowd).

I have had negative and unresolved issue with scrapping of my content and unauthorised (aka stealing) of my images. So I only want to share publically via services that offer creative commons licences. I am also not sure that social media is as secure as they pretend. I worry about small things like less desirable people I don’t want to share with, just what is actually being stolen and reused as some one else work or worse sold. I’m very conscious of the filter bubble effect that social media sites like google+ and facebook can create.

So I am very unlike to do much more than token photographic works and art publically in the cloud. I am certainly unlikely to put my entire collection of photos in the cloud even for a backup. Lets see if I am forced to eat my words in the next 10 years!