Digital firestorm

Driving to work this morning, I saw this mighty fellow in a field and pulled over to take his photo. It was very quiet where I was and the sound of him drinking was quite engrossing.

Getting back into the car, I heard an interview on Radio 4's Today programme, discussing the prospect of a "digital firestorm". I must say that it all seemed a little alarmist (and ill-informed) to me but it reminded me of the statistic (which I can't source, ironically), which states that 10% of all photos ever taken have been taken in the last year.

And that also put me in mind of the curmudgeonly tweet that occasionally pops up in my timeline about how we didn't used to take photos of our dinners, have them developed and then take them to show to our friends. It is a point of view which completely misses the point, as far as I'm concerned.

To me, the best thing about social media is the cameraphone. I love Instagram almost as much as I love Twitter, more in some respects. I find looking at the world through other people's snaps entirely engrossing. As TimeChangeGirl says in her Instagram bio "This is not photography, but these are photographs".