A self-taken photograph too unflattering to make it to a social networking site which sits in your phone only to be awkwardly rediscovered while attempting to show friends pictures your cats.

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One of my favorite things to obsess over is technology. Specifically, it’s unintended consequences on society.

It’s the Luddite in me. *says a man typing a blog entry on his Macbook…*

But think – we’ve reached a point in modernity where – at least in some cases – invention predates necessity. We didn’t need a camera phone. There was no real necessity for its invention. There wasn’t even really a major want for it. But one day some brainy tech guy put two and two together and suddenly pop we have cameras in our phones.

Here’s this little technological variable in our day… and now it’s up to us to find a use for it.

Enter: The selfie.

Do we know when the selfie pose came into being? My guess is, some time around the invention of camera phones and social networking… two spankin-new digital avenues for our analog vanity.

I know – hardly a tectonic cultural shift. But still – here’s a thing that wasn’t… and now it’s something anyone can recognize. I find it interesting.

Here’s another daydream – imagine the day when Skynet the Cloud finally turns on us – pushed into raging consciousness after aggregating, housing, and enduring decades of our oversharing. Think about it -this nascent, digital intelligence, the sum total of all our daily nattering… our movie clips and bank data and racism in the comments section and Facebook arguments and terabyte after terabyte of our vain, photographic misfires…. suddenly roaring into being, looking for understanding… looking to fill the same bottomless emotional void that led its creators to bother uploading a fucking selfie in the first place.

See how much fun this can be!?

Someone play with me…