08/16/2023

What Your Screenshots and Selfies Actually Say About You

Your camera roll might not really be so different from your parents’ photo album

"While looking through my parents' old photo albums, I noticed that they had lots of pictures of friends gathered together. It made me think about the camera roll on my phone, which is full of screenshots and selfies. Why don't I take pictures with my friends?"
—Say Cheese

Dear Cheese - All modern technologies bend toward self-referentiality. Long before the birth of the smartphone, the earliest screenshots required actually pointing a camera at a television or computer screen, an act that (for those who can remember it) recalled the repelling force of two like-charged magnets, or the nauseating infinite regress of two mirrors facing each other. Part of you half-expected a black hole to swallow you up, punishment for having summoned some elusive paradox in the universe.

We now live full-time in that Escherian fun house, spending more of our lives on phones that serve as both the object and channel of our attention. Some years ago, back when AI lacked its current powers of discernment, my mom got a kick out of sending me the deranged "Memories" that her iPhone culled from her camera roll. As the tinkly, inspirational music crescendoed, the slideshows reliably displayed photos of her friends and grandchildren before concluding with screenshots of confirmation codes and bathroom faucets from Home Depot's website.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.