Digital Intimacy

BK is currently posting a book (really most of a journal) that bears out some pretty heavy stuff. At least so far. A question regarding the correct spelling of dialog versus dialogue sparked an interesting discussion of both the correct spelling and whether we are, "if we are not subconsciously abbreviating life, feelings, sharing, intimacy...."

I am republishing that bit here, because I think that it is an interesting question and has some interesting answers.

BK:

Aha, the game is afoot...or would that be a foot?

Good volley on the dialogue/dialog quandary. Here's a comment from a literature lover and someone who loves the art of words and the way they impact the art of our lives: we risk as a culture that has been largely trending towards dehuamization through technology. We want everything quicker, faster, shorter. We are more and more looking for shorter ways to do...everything. We are abbreviating words, thoughts and feelings -- lol, cul8r, etc. Makes me wonder if we are not subconsciously abbreviating life, feelings, sharing, intimacy....

tyhi :)

Me:

Man, I didn't understand half of that. I would suggest that while emotions, intimacy, etc. can be addressed in this digital age -- even with abbr's -- there still is nothing like face to face.

Couple of things that stand in the way of that statement however. First, the ReachTJ blog. That seemed to hit home pretty hard for 10,000-20,000 people. I haven't met most of them (obviously) but as I do I am almost always told they feel like they know me. And they do in a real, if not complete sense. A lot went down during that month, and a lot was beared (sp?). It was undoubtedly one of the most defining moments of my life, my family's life, and thousands of people watched in realtime. Which leads up to my second point...

Why are you publishing this if not to share some pretty deep and intimate stuff? These posts aren't "just" lessons about life/marriage etc. They are posts about BK's heart, his personal relationship with God. By the end there are going to be a lot of people that know you (again, in a real sense, if not complete), even if you don't know them. You and I have only met two or three times, but now I am "meeting" you twice a week, discussing (literally, when it comes to comments) some of the most important, intimate, secret, emotional, deep, dangerous, and exciting part of life.

In such a context, words and abbreviations matter only how well they communicate. And sometimes abbreviations work just as well (better occasionally, especially to express lighter emotions.)

-mj

(Guess I am chatty today!)

Certainly the digital age is allowing us to reach more people faster. And, ironically, the anonymity sometimes leads to deeper discussions than would otherwise be had.

Watching Bethel: A Little More In-Depth

When I started this project I found that there was a pretty was way to differentiate between night and day (pictures), which is important so there isn't five seconds of blackness between each day. Done correctly, it even adds a nice fade in and fade out between days.

The way I did this was by looking at the number of different colors in a given picture. If it was under 4,000 it was nighttime. For sure. Until December 14th. On that day the construction workers started leaving a light on that pushed the number of colors up close to 10,000. Day shots generally have 45,000-60,000 different colors (yes, in one picture). However, upping my "border" value between day and night to 10,000 pretty eliminated any fades, and still included the night shots with the light on.

Hence, a different method has to be chosen. I have two choices, so far as I can tell. First, determine the average lightness of a picture to decide if it ought to be included in the time lapse. Second, figure out when the construction hours are, only include those pictures and write my own script for fades. The former is much easier.

For a visual idea of what "lightness" looks like in a photo I have posted an Excel graph below. The scale on lightness of is out of 255 for technical reasons so I put a couple of percentages in to make it easier to read. Essentially, during the day the lightness is always between 55% and 63%. A lightness of zero is complete blackness, and a lightness of 100% would be pure white, so finding that the average lightness is somewhere in the middle isn't a big surprise.

The vertical axis is the lightness value of a picture (one grabbed every minute) and the horizontal axis is what minute of the say it is. A day has 1,400 minutes, so 7,200 is high noon. You can see how the day widens and narrows from the fall through the spring, although I should note that the values from October and May in the graph are not complete. Hence, I expect that the May curve would widen out a bit. Finally, the horizontal axis doesn't start at 0 or end at 1,400. They are just straight lines before and past those points respectively, so I cut them out.



P.S. I may move back to madjon.net soon. Maybe, designing a website isn't easy... But I'm also not a huge fan of Blogger anymore.