There's a lot in this article from the New York Times that mirrors my own use of cameras since the 60s. And since the arrival of the iPhone 5s, I have almost stopped using a larger camera (a Lumix) and the Nikon DSLR is just gathering dust!
Furthermore the time spent with the family in Australia brought home to me how photos are now edited and shared on an almost real-time basis, with context replacing quality as the primary goal.
Indeed it is context that most needs enhancing now: photos should come not only with technical metadata about the photo itself, but facial recognition, links to the website and blogs of
those in the photo, the history of the place in which the photo was taken (especially of landscapes where battles and other historical events should be accessible though links), weather,
geography and topography, flora and fauna, links to any reviews which you or your friends might have written to the venue (for hotels, restaurants and clubs), and the like. The idea is to give the
fullest context to the shared event.
This line of thought reminds me of the strap-line of this Journal: 'No medium has yet been devised for the translation of life into language, nor can any words recall the dazzling fluidity of days. Single yet fixed in sequence they fall like the shaft of a cataract into time and through it.' (Freya Stark - Beyond Euphrates). For me, this is the great attraction of photography, as a single image can capture a moment in life in a way that prose or poetry can do only with great effort. And the growing ease of sharing our images moves us still closer to this dream.
