Don’t Buy Tacky Digital Picture Frames

Some things from the past are really tacky. Shag carpet, for example. And TVs with fake wood paneling. Though some of us love that stuff for its nostalgic quality, I don’t think any one would ever call it “classy” or “quality.”

Today’s equivalent of the wood-paneled appliance is the digital, USB picture frame. I’m sure you’ve seen this item. Perhaps you even own one yourself. When they first came out the novelty of the idea nearly made me get one. Thankfully I didn’t make that mistake and if I had I would probably find some person I only half liked so I could give it to them as a Christmas present.

These frames are tacky for a lot of reasons. First off, they’re pretending to be something they’re not. Like it or not, displaying 4x6 photographs on a bedside table is going to get rarer and rarer. After all, digital pictures are not pieces of paper and they don’t need a picture frame to hold them. Hardly anyone takes anything but digital pictures these days, but because all of us were alive when analog photography ruled the earth we still tend to want to play by the old rules. Just because were taking digital photographs, we might think, doesn’t mean that we actually have to display them differently. That, however, is wrong. Like most new technologies, digital photography is not well suited to old fashion frames and it will eventually change how we think about pictures.

In many ways digital pictures frames are a lot like those old radios, record players, or TVs that pretended to be large wooden pieces of furniture. You’ve probably seen these things in the homes of old people (my grandparents seemed to have a few). I think the idea was that all the new-fangled technology needed to be proper and respectable, so it had to look like a table or a cabinet. In retrospect that idea seems quaint and kind of silly. Similarly, the idea that you’d want to put a low quality monitor on a shelf to perpetually play a screen saver is rapidly looking outdated, passé, and downright ridiculous.

As if digital picture frames weren’t bad enough by themselves, many models actually leave the flash drive hanging out the side. Why the frames’ designers wouldn’t have realized that USB drives are longer than half a centimeter baffles me. Still, I’d say at least half the frames I’ve seen suffer from this problem and it always kills what little aesthetic appeal they have; it’s like wearing a polyester suit, and then going out with your fly down.

I predict that in the future we will have ways of viewing pictures that take into account technological advances and don’t try to make new things fit into old boxes. If I could vote, it’d be for something like Facebook’s photo system, where I get to chose which pictures I see. With the proliferation of the internet into new devices (gaming systems, phones, etc.) anything around the house could be used to display pictures. For example, while you’re not watching anything, your TV could continuously display pictures that are stored in one central location and accessible by any device. (Someone is probably reading this think that they like being able to have their digital photographs displayed like old fashioned ones and they don’t want something new. All I can say is too bad. After all, how often to you consume technology or media the way people did in the 80s, 70s, or 60s? The reality is that things change.)

Of course, predicting the future is a fool’s game, but learning from the past is not. It’s possible that digital picture frames will survive and be really cool for a long time. On the other hand, there are very few examples of old technologies (like picture frames) successfully being applied to new ones (like digital photography). So this holiday season avoid digital picture frames and don’t do the 2009 equivalent of installing wood paneling in your home. It’s a choice you appreciate sooner rather than later.