Academic

If You Thought Nobody Would Notice . . .

By Rob Heverly

In thinking last night about the issues raised in one of my first posts here as a guest blogger, I started looking for additional examples of the persistence of digital artifacts. In running my searches, I came across other issues raised by the persistence, plasticity, and ease of digitally copying image and video files ("other" in relation to my main concern, the effects of persistence on young people), mainly involving advertising and the use (or misuse) of digital technology.

It should be fairly obvious that there are lots of sites on the Internet that focus on media issues, and they often make copies and mirrors of mistakes made in whatever area they focus on. One site in particular made me think and laugh. For example, Microsoft is having PR problems right now for running an image in an advertisement in the US that contained a woman, an asian man, and a black man, and then running the same ad in Poland with the black man's head "Photoshopped" (it's a verb, I swear, and though Adobe doesn't like it, they do it, too) and replaced with that of a white man (but they didn't bother to replace his hand). Stories here, here and here, with original images; the images are also here (via slashdot) with links to the ad pages. As some of the stories note, Microsoft has since apologized and is now using only the original image. But the photoshopped image is, of course, still widely available.

The site I'm talking about is PhotoShopDisasters, and it's worth scrolling down to see photos that include Jennifer  Lopez's baby with an arm mistakenly PhotoShopped onto its head, a man walking holding hands with someone who doesn't appear in the photo (just the hand appears intertwined with his), and a CD the size of an LP (maybe the ad company was feeling nostalgic for the good old days of LPs).

As PhotoShopDisasters says, "Nobody will notice? WE ARE THAT NOBODY!" A good lesson to learn when thinking about what you make available -- especially online -- in this day and age.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on August 26, 2009 (boomark / email).