Via boingboing, I found a link to this extremely cute gallery on flickr.com of photos of "faces" found in everyday objects. Here's what boingboing has to say on the topic:

According to Wikipedia, pareidolia is "a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (usually an image) being mistakenly perceived as recognizable."

One common form of pareidolia is seeing faces in objects (like the flying spaghetti monster on a tortilla, or the face of Sean Hannity on a human being). There is an excellent book filled with pictures of faces on objects, called Faces.

My friend Jim Leftwich has been taking his own pictures of faces for a while, and has a flickr gallery with them. As I expect from Jim, the photos are whimsical and surprising.

Unfortunately, pareidolia is not what I want to write about.

You see, those pictures Jim took, while cute and funny, are not particularly good pictures. Before the digital age, few photographers will be willing to spend the time and effort documenting such phenomenon, one of the problems being the cost of film and equipment (of course, there are other problems: like the problem of lighting [the found objects in the pictures often are not in a place that is typically well lit], the problem of the subject matter being seen as silly and trivial by the critics, etc.).

I am talking about the digital age and the phenomenon of self-publishing.

One of the big advances that comes about with the internet is the ability for humans to now easily make copies of information. Prior to the internet, publishing texts requires the sponsorship/contract of a printing house, publishing music requires the backing of a record company, publishing photography, while not requiring the interest of a big economic entity, does require significant financial investment in the producing the prints. Now, there is a proliferation of blogs (this one included), and with it, a large number of self-published music and photographs (as well as other forms of creations and art) that are available on the internet.

There are, of course, pros and cons of this proliferation. On the good side, this new freedom to self publish is leading the way for a resurgence of democracy. Everyone now has a voice (which voices will people listen to is still up for grabs). With the advent of LiveJournal and similar services, people soon find others with whom they share their beliefs, and communities are formed on the internet. In a way, this is the best realization so far of our rights to free speech and to free assembly.

On the flip side, information soon becomes overwhelming on the internet. Of the millions of blogs out there, how many actually post some useful information (I am also guilty of this so far, though I do intent on posting more about mathematics in the future)? Of the pictures we find on flickr, how many are inconsequential like the one I linked today? How many are actually full thousand-word-stories that show humanity at its best (or worst)? The problem soon becomes apparent: how do we actually sift through all those information and find what is, well, informative? Going randomly through LiveJournal or Blogger, or any of the blogging services out there, about 4 out of 5 blogs are actually virus-laden advertisements. The internet is full of SPAM.

(argh. I lost my train of thought. S is chatting with me on IM, and she is so cute... and distracting... and cute... and distracting...)