

The Power of Photos - mittermayr
http://mittermayr.tumblr.com/post/26699540226/the-power-of-photos

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jiggity
Roman here has stumbled upon a _very_ powerful force in products. Emotions are
the reason why we get up in the morning. It's what gives life color and
variety and meaning. It's the reason why we have friends, why some of us might
enjoy work, why we prefer to live "life" instead of lying in bed, waiting to
die.

What Roman refers to in his photos is the fact that they are an incredibly
efficient vehicle of emotions. In a small 480x320px package, you can reminisce
about your unrequited crush, your first child just hours old, or your passed-
away parents showing you how to use a computer. In that sudden surge, you take
a sharp breath, close your eyes as your head begins to spin. You have just
experienced a more-significant-than-average moment in life.

I would go as far as to say emotions is the primary metric of life. The "best"
times of your life are when you are feeling a surge of emotions, indelibly
marking it on your brain as a memorable time. The other times when you don't
feel anything tend to fade away until its nothing but a bland grayness when
you try to recall that period in time. To maximize life is to maximize the
memories you can remember. You maximize the memories you can remember by
experiencing more emotions.

Everyone wants to live meaningful, memorable lives. This is a _primal_ need.

.

If emotions give life value, what if we can inject more into ourselves?
Somehow we "cheat" the system and get more emotions than what is naturally due
to us. This exists. We know this technique as "going to the movies." The
reason why people pay $12 to watch a 2-hour long movie is because of the
emotion stimulation that we yearn and crave for. It represents a very dense
serving of love, humor, coolness, loneliness, accomplishment, disappointment,
schadenfreude that leaves reality that much more bland and gray.

But wait, you might argue. I'm a diciplined software engineer. I'm objective,
diligent, and focused. I don't have any time to waste with sissy emotions. I'd
argue that if anything, as engineers, we're even more addicted to emotions
than anyone else. We chase after the pure bliss that comes from building
something ourselves with our own hands. That emotion is so powerful that it
overtakes what normal people regard as "fun" -- movies, fiction books,
computer games.

.

So, what does this mean for our startups? It means that for people who _get_
it, it offers a powerful design mechanism that makes products that give
_primal_ value. If you have an effective mechanism to trigger emotions, you
have built something of value that people desperately desire.

This applies to any sort of startup -- not just social network / photo apps.
Add a narrative to the workflow; make your user feel things. Let them feel a
heightened sense of accomplishment. Let them laugh because of an industry
inside joke you included. Letting your users feel more things while they use
your product is the surest way to beat your competition. More emotions mean
more perceived value. More perceived value means more profit.

~~~
NirDremer
great point of view.

~~~
mittermayr
totally agree

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rytis
Not too sure about the bit that says our brain stores everything. There's a
school of thought in psychology that works on hypothesis that our brain only
stores partial information, and the rest is reconstructed. Bit like a fantasy,
where you imagine the most likely outcome and context for the bit that you
remember. I can't find it right now (how ironic), but the example was, that if
everyone close to you (parents, brothers, sisters) insisted and told stories
about you that did not actually take place, you would eventually accept them
as reality, and be 100% convinced that this is what actually happened to you.
Anyone fancies an experiment?... :)

~~~
mittermayr
i agree, this sounds much more reasonable ... and I think this explains why we
quickly lose details of situations ... they are likely not deemed important
enough (or possibly can be replaced with blurry bits and pieces and
reconstructed). not a brain scientist. although this whole thing got me
curious for sure.

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aneth4
> Today, we know that our brain is capable of storying an insane amount of
> data (estimates value it at around 2.5 petabytes, that’s 2.5 million
> gigabytes (more here).

It won't be long before this no longer seems like an insane amount of data.
It's less than a thousand's of today's commodity hard drives.

~~~
mittermayr
i know, insane! looking forward to that :)

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dmitriy_ko
Can you imagine how Google Glasses will change this experience? You will be
able to record everything you see, every day, every moment. Imagine wearing
Google glasses all the time, for 15 years constantly recording everything.
Then you will really be able to relive every moment of your life.

~~~
mittermayr
i wear glasses and for a while, i was considering trying this as an experiment
(there were various options available with a camera in the frame and such) ...
just to take snapshots every few minutes and do that for a week or so. thing
is, this most likely will top the point of redundancy, where a sequence of
images might just not be relevant anymore after the first image in a
particular scene...

~~~
sebastianavina
it is going to be a great tool for monitoring employees. muahaha

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scosman
Great write up. My current startup is working on exactly this problem (pulling
together all your photos from different devices and making it easy to find a
specific moment). You might want to check it out, it should make the backup
and explore process a little smoother; <http://shoeboxapp.com>

~~~
mittermayr
i like the idea of separating free from paid through original full resolution
and really-good resolution. it's rare that I need full-scale photos, and even
in those rare cases, I often get by with a lesser quality shot that I can
still print at a reasonable quality.

the only thing I hope you guys will figure out is the sheer amount of data.
photos means videos for me, I own a DSLR which records beautiful, and I mean
BEAUTIFUL CINEMATIC FULL HD video ... This is the most touching and pure
recorded material of things I've ever created. And they start at 300MB up to
2-3 GB sometimes. It might be a great song at a concert, it might be an
interview I did or a whole lot of other things contained in 1-10 minutes of
video. And while everyone surely sees this happening in the future,
transferring these massive amounts of data to an online (my photos alone
exceed over 300GB) is really hard to imagine, especially with the fear of
losing it all through a crash. Which, I also have at home, in terms of risk.
And selecting/picking certain photos to upload is going to ruin my master-
scheme of things, it'll lead to new disaster for me.

So, if there will/is a way to upload EVERYTHING, which my bandwidth probably
supports in a 1-2 months time-frame, and all my data is super-secure for LIFE
(my life-time at least), then well, then I'd be happy to hand over all my most
emotional material.

I'll check out the service when I get to it, it might be a great way to
collect all my mobile snapshots from various sources and use it as a collector
of being on the move.

~~~
scosman
You've got the idea. We're focusing on great clients to make the upload
painless and keep everything up to date. Videos are next, but as you point out
a lot harder.

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zvrba
I can't understand this sentimental attachment to the past.

~~~
mittermayr
go on ... explain, would love to hear

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pbsd
What is there to explain? Why the heck would anyone want to remember all the
details of their lives? Worse, have them around for anyone to see (e.g.
Facebook and friends).

I am unable to imagine some motivation for people _wanting_ this.

~~~
mittermayr
hm, I would see how you personally don't feel like wanting this, but being
unable to imagine why somebody would want it seems like a pretty sad thing to
say.

photos capture moments. and since many photos are taken in the middle of
happy, memorable moments, they represent an anchor to that moment back in the
past.

life is rarely a ride of joy 24/7 365. and going back to these memories, I
find, is a very interesting and often out-of-the-moment experience hard to
find elsewhere.

~~~
pbsd
Photos capture pixels. You get attached to it, like some people get attached
to other inanimate objects (trinkets, lockets, and so on). It seems hard to
believe people need these things to summon memories, but to each his own, I
guess.

~~~
drucken
Every single human I have ever met has a profound reaction to seeing photos of
both their past life and those of others. The further the distance in time and
the closer the relationship, the deeper the reaction in general too. In
addition, no one has perfect memory or a means to access all memories. This
includes some rather well known savants!

Perhaps you are asking if there is retrieval value from photos? Yes, very much
so due to the context, flow of information (in time, space and relationships)
and emotional content.

From an external perspective (which is perhaps the lowest value), imagine if
we had access to photo and possibly other media streams throughout the
lifetime of key historical figures like Einstein or Newton or even your
parents?

So, maybe the question should be, pbsd, are you even human? I am only half-
joking...

