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I knew her pre-Jennicam, from IRC. This was before JPEG was really "out." She sent me either a .bmp or a .gif of her left (I think) calf, using a device she c

I knew her pre-Jennicam, from IRC. This was before JPEG was really "out." She sent me either a .bmp or a .gif of her left (I think) calf, using a device she called a "digital camera." At the time I had been working on making an incredibly primitive (and slow) scanner using an XY plotter, a light pen, and a data acquisition board, so it dovetailed with my little project. She was interested in disintermediation. She could take an image and send it directly to someone without it being taken to a darkroom, without it being published and distributed, and so forth. This is common now but it was ... really startling back around 1991 or 1992. No later than that, given my timeframes. An image of a hand may have also been sent. She could just ... send me random local images. Given that my home setup was a simple terminal, I had to go to campus to look at the images on a workstation but it was still from there to here without anyone else being in the middle of it. My memory of decades old conversations are rather dim, but it wasn't about exhibition for her, rather it was direct access, without filters or someone else trying to decide "what is worth publishing." Her willingness to explore this new territory was very impressive to me.

glouwbug 7y ago
...What am I reading?
- t34543 7y ago
  A first person account of what Jenni’s mental state was on the early days of the internet. Presumably this sets a frame for her motivations to live stream her life later.
  - pankajdoharey 7y ago
    I have never understood why would people want to broadcast their personal lives on the internet. I guess the notion of privacy is different for everyone.
    - schoen 7y ago
      You can see from Wikipedia that after Jenni finished this experiment, she significantly changed her habits in a privacy-protective direction and now has virtually no public persona. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Ringley#After_JenniCam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Ringley#After_JenniCa... I tried some experiments around 1998 with a script on my web page where I would self-report my location to the public (aspirationally on an hourly basis, but in practice probably less than once a day). I admit that at that time I had an argument with a friend about whether location privacy was worth worrying about. My answer nowadays is definitely yes, but I also still appreciate the difference between intentionally sharing information about yourself (including "oversharing") and having someone else monitor you, your whereabouts, your communications, etc. One difference is that in the former case, if you decide you have an adversary of some sort, you can stop sharing (or reduce your sharing, or make it less accurate). In the latter case, you can't make these changes so readily. As soon as Jenni wanted to stop sharing, she stopped.
    - bookofjoe 7y ago
      I livestream on Twitter via Periscope as much as I can. I'm not sure why.
code_duck 7y ago
Around 91-92 I had DigiView for my Amiga. This was a hardware add-on that could digitize any still images from a video source (RCA plug), whether from a live camcorder or a tape. It created a digital image that could be manipulated on the Amiga. It could even create a color image with the help of three filters, a la early photography. I didn't have any sort of network connectivity, though.
- noonespecial 7y ago
  I had it too on my Amiga. Same time about. My father also had one of the first color inkjets from work that mostly stayed at our house. I'd include color photos in my school reports. Teachers stared open-mouthed at them. It was like having a superpower.
  - dillonmckay 7y ago
    I remember buying, for $500, an HP Deskjet 500C, that printed at 300dpi, and you had to swap the black cartridge for the color cartridge (CMY, no K), depending on what you wanted to print.
  - themodelplumber 7y ago
    Funny! You made me remember some friends who did that. And I still recall some of the replies from people like drama teachers, wondering exactly how much advanced hardware, and at what kind of prices, contributed to the design of a homework report on a short film we had watched in class. Incorporating images from the early WWW, or was it Encarta. As I recall it was take-home hardware used by a Boeing employee (and his family...).
- HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
  Ha. Around that time I was working for a company that sold a digitizer for the Radio Shack Color Computer (CoCo 3). We were a small outfit, so engineers also did customer support. To this day I remember the address of a woman who was so proud that she finally figured how to use it to digitize a photo of her daughter that she printed it out and mailed it to me as thanks for my help :-)
jcims 7y ago
Always love seeing stories from my formative years on the Internet. All of these little private, intimate moments on IRC and freenets and talkers and muds forever lost but in the minds of those that were there. Thanks for sharing.
- HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
  So do I. One of my pleasures was finding someone whose Usenet post from 1995 I had saved on a computer and then backed up repeatedly over the years. The post was about a machine he built to automate letting his cat out and I recalled it instantly (even knew the filename I had it saved to) because his recounting of what happened was so hilarious. I sent him the file and the really weird thing was he had no recollection of the events. He was sure it was something he would have done, but really couldn't remember. I'm actually surprised that I've only come across one other person I "knew" from Usenet here on HN.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    I'm still using the same username. Anyone who frequented, say, talk.origins a decade and a half ago, might recognize me.
  - visiblink 7y ago
    I still hang out on usenet. comp.misc has a great little community -- and most of the discussion revolves around stories that are also found in places like HN, Slashdot, Soylent News, etc.
    - jcims 7y ago
      How are you getting there? Google Groups or something else?
      - visiblink 7y ago
        You can register with eternal-september.org for a free usenet account. Then you can set up Thunderbird, Claws Mail or another email app (even slrn or alpine on the linux command line) to read and respond to newsgroups.
keithnz 7y ago
very cool :) I started on IRC in 91/2 ish, the whole thing felt quite incredible, given I'm in New Zealand and suddenly had "all" the people of the world to talk to... quite odd that over time, except for special interest group and direct connections to foreign friends, people have a tendency to chat to other locals, long lost are those times of the internet being awe inspiring, especially I remember when CU-SeeMe came on the scene, it was amazing!

glouwbug 7y ago

...What am I reading?

t34543 7y ago
A first person account of what Jenni’s mental state was on the early days of the internet. Presumably this sets a frame for her motivations to live stream her life later.
- pankajdoharey 7y ago
  I have never understood why would people want to broadcast their personal lives on the internet. I guess the notion of privacy is different for everyone.
  - schoen 7y ago
    You can see from Wikipedia that after Jenni finished this experiment, she significantly changed her habits in a privacy-protective direction and now has virtually no public persona. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Ringley#After_JenniCam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Ringley#After_JenniCa... I tried some experiments around 1998 with a script on my web page where I would self-report my location to the public (aspirationally on an hourly basis, but in practice probably less than once a day). I admit that at that time I had an argument with a friend about whether location privacy was worth worrying about. My answer nowadays is definitely yes, but I also still appreciate the difference between intentionally sharing information about yourself (including "oversharing") and having someone else monitor you, your whereabouts, your communications, etc. One difference is that in the former case, if you decide you have an adversary of some sort, you can stop sharing (or reduce your sharing, or make it less accurate). In the latter case, you can't make these changes so readily. As soon as Jenni wanted to stop sharing, she stopped.
  - bookofjoe 7y ago
    I livestream on Twitter via Periscope as much as I can. I'm not sure why.

code_duck 7y ago

Around 91-92 I had DigiView for my Amiga. This was a hardware add-on that could digitize any still images from a video source (RCA plug), whether from a live camcorder or a tape. It created a digital image that could be manipulated on the Amiga. It could even create a color image with the help of three filters, a la early photography. I didn't have any sort of network connectivity, though.

noonespecial 7y ago
I had it too on my Amiga. Same time about. My father also had one of the first color inkjets from work that mostly stayed at our house. I'd include color photos in my school reports. Teachers stared open-mouthed at them. It was like having a superpower.
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  I remember buying, for $500, an HP Deskjet 500C, that printed at 300dpi, and you had to swap the black cartridge for the color cartridge (CMY, no K), depending on what you wanted to print.
- themodelplumber 7y ago
  Funny! You made me remember some friends who did that. And I still recall some of the replies from people like drama teachers, wondering exactly how much advanced hardware, and at what kind of prices, contributed to the design of a homework report on a short film we had watched in class. Incorporating images from the early WWW, or was it Encarta. As I recall it was take-home hardware used by a Boeing employee (and his family...).
HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
Ha. Around that time I was working for a company that sold a digitizer for the Radio Shack Color Computer (CoCo 3). We were a small outfit, so engineers also did customer support. To this day I remember the address of a woman who was so proud that she finally figured how to use it to digitize a photo of her daughter that she printed it out and mailed it to me as thanks for my help :-)

jcims 7y ago

Always love seeing stories from my formative years on the Internet. All of these little private, intimate moments on IRC and freenets and talkers and muds forever lost but in the minds of those that were there. Thanks for sharing.

HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
So do I. One of my pleasures was finding someone whose Usenet post from 1995 I had saved on a computer and then backed up repeatedly over the years. The post was about a machine he built to automate letting his cat out and I recalled it instantly (even knew the filename I had it saved to) because his recounting of what happened was so hilarious. I sent him the file and the really weird thing was he had no recollection of the events. He was sure it was something he would have done, but really couldn't remember. I'm actually surprised that I've only come across one other person I "knew" from Usenet here on HN.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  I'm still using the same username. Anyone who frequented, say, talk.origins a decade and a half ago, might recognize me.
- visiblink 7y ago
  I still hang out on usenet. comp.misc has a great little community -- and most of the discussion revolves around stories that are also found in places like HN, Slashdot, Soylent News, etc.
  - jcims 7y ago
    How are you getting there? Google Groups or something else?
    - visiblink 7y ago
      You can register with eternal-september.org for a free usenet account. Then you can set up Thunderbird, Claws Mail or another email app (even slrn or alpine on the linux command line) to read and respond to newsgroups.

keithnz 7y ago

very cool :) I started on IRC in 91/2 ish, the whole thing felt quite incredible, given I'm in New Zealand and suddenly had "all" the people of the world to talk to... quite odd that over time, except for special interest group and direct connections to foreign friends, people have a tendency to chat to other locals, long lost are those times of the internet being awe inspiring, especially I remember when CU-SeeMe came on the scene, it was amazing!