In an article called The Machine Zone in The Atlantic, these breathtaking stats about on-line photos are revealed:
"Facebook is the single largest photo sharing service in the world. In 2008, when the site had 10 billion photographs archived, users pulled up 15 billion images per day. The process was occurring 300,000 per second. Click. Photo. Click.
In 2010, Facebook had uploaded 65 billion images, and they were served up at a peak rate of 1 million per second. By 2012, Facebook users were uploading 300 million photos per day. And early this year, Facebook announced users had entrusted them with 240 billion photos.
If we assume the ratio of photos uploaded to photos viewed has not declined precipitously, users are probably pulling up billions of Facebook photos per day at a rate of millions per second. Click. Photo. Click.Facebook is the single largest photo sharing service in the world. In 2008, when the site had 10 billion photographs archived, users pulled up 15 billion images per day. The process was occurring 300,000 per second. Click. Photo. Click.
In 2010, Facebook had uploaded 65 billion images, and they were served up at a peak rate of 1 million per second. By 2012, Facebook users were uploading 300 million photos per day. And early this year, Facebook announced users had entrusted them with 240 billion photos.
If we assume the ratio of photos uploaded to photos viewed has not declined precipitously, users are probably pulling up billions of Facebook photos per day at a rate of millions per second. Click. Photo. Click."
Predictably, The Atlantic and author Alexis Madrigal harbor dark suspicions about what drives our interest in these photos.
What if the 400 minutes a month people spend on Facebook is mostly (or even partly) spent in the machine zone, hypnotized, accumulating ad impressions for the company?
Here's my contention: Thinking about the machine zone and the coercive loops that initiate it has great explanatory power. It explains the "lost time" feeling I've had on various social networks, and that I've heard other people talk about. It explains how the more Facebook has tuned its services, the more people seem to dislike the experiences they have, even as they don't abandon them. It helps explain why people keep going back to services that suck them in, even when they say they don't want to.
This seems to me, as a piece of criticism, almost entirely habitual. The only thing more certain than each new wave of technology is the generation of intellectuals who exert themselves to show how this technology puts our agency, autonomy and liberty at risk. Note especially the term "hypnotized." Any time a deep thinker can find evidence that we are hypnotized, well, mission accomplished. Put down your pen and walk away from the table!
I don't doubt that there is a darker side to our consumption of all these photos, but let us cast the net a little wider. I think we are looking at all those photos in search of something. Actually, in search of many things. Let's have a wonder what.
Reference
“The Machine Zone: This Is Where You Go When You Just Can’t Stop Looking at Pictures on Facebook.” 2013. The Atlantic. (August 4, 2013). For the full article, click here.
Acknowledgments
To Steve Crandall for pointing out the article. To Martin Silverman and his book Disconcerting Issue which opens with his respondents reading the newspaper looking for stories that make their lives make sense.
Silverman, Martin G. 1971. Disconcerting Issue; Meaning and Struggle in a Resettled Pacific Community. University of Chicago Press.
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