Mass Observation Project: recording everyday life in Britain | Hacker News Reader

Mass Observation Project: recording everyday life in Britain

massobs.org.uk

28 pointsbenbreen6 comments

Reminds me of the work of Studs Terkel [1] who focused on interviewing everyday Americans. Some of his recordings from the 1970s [2] can be found with commentary as a part of this NPR podcast episode [3] which I have enjoyed coming back to recently.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studs_Terkel

[2] https://www.npr.org/2016/09/30/494742224/meet-some-of-the-vo...

[3] https://www.npr.org/2019/09/13/760632634/episode-939-the-wor...

I've got a couple of his books, full of interviews with people from all walks of life, e.g. Working and American Dreams. They're incredibly awesome—some of the best, most enlightening books I've ever read.

Reminds me of my grandpa, who was an amateur photographer (around WW2 iirc?) and later on videographer who took pictures and videos of everyday things. His work has been donated and archived at the local provincial museum, pretty sure some of it has been on display as well.

Take pictures and make notes of the mundane. Modern social media and before that, "family" photography focuses on the highlights and best moments of your life, and some of it (instagram influencers) focus on a fictional, idealized lifestyle with a goal of self- and brand promotion in mind. And everything is very fleeting, there's tons of pictures of cats on my phone for example but all it takes is one accident and it's gone (although I have backups set up). But a lot of pictures are lost because of a lack of physical prints.

Random business idea: Microchip or negative photo printing. Send your phone's camera roll to a company, they send you a physical, archival version back that can either be printed like regular photos, or viewed through a viewer. Has to be physical and visual though.

I'm sure there's services out there for digital archival as well.

Reminds me of "Kitchen stories" [1], a movie about Sweden's govt trying to design the "perfect kitchen", sending out people to sit in the kitchen and observe tenants in their everyday lives. :D

[1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0323872/

I’ve been on the panel of volunteer Mass Observation writers for about 5 years. I find it a helpful form of directed journaling. Over the years I’ve dipped in and out of regular journaling but rarely kept it up. Instead, I prefer to be asked interesting prompting questions and use those as a springboard for sharing ideas. The prompts and the external “utility” of MO are better for me than a blank sheet of paper or a private diary. In fact, I try to almost never write private diaries, but instead share random diary-like thoughts with other people. It’s less of a black hole and usually results in good conversation.

MO is a longitudinal study of everyday life. In my responses to the directives, I sometimes write asides to the researchers who may one day read them.

If you want to see what's there you're probably looking for https://www.amdigital.co.uk/primary-sources/mass-observation....

"Free, four-week trials are available on all Adam Matthew Digital products by completing the trial request form below. A member of the team will contact you with confirmation of your trial details on submission of the form.

Trials are open to teachers, faculty and librarians of universities, colleges, and academic institutions (private and public)."

Good to see the 80s archive is embrancing 80s tech.

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