Maybe my photo library is not as "canonical" as yours, or maybe I am just incredibly disorganized, but I find that I am storing more and more of my extensive photo library on various photo archiving and blogging websites. Presumably, my stored files in these ephemeral locations will someday be compromised or deleted, perhaps because a given server will crash, or perhaps because websites are sometimes taken away without warning. Flickr is not forever, so perhaps I should be investing in an NAS, or some such device. Then again, I am not married, and I do not record music with a live-in partner, so I do not require an in-house shared storage space at the moment. Still, if what you say about the closet servers is true, I suppose at that point in time I will no longer have the need for flickr. But perhaps the lesson here is to get off my ass and store things the old/new-fashioned way. But I guess, looking over my post here, it's a lesson I don't even need to learn... And I probably won't.

There is one important advantage to Flickr: it's an off-site backup. All the devices in my home are vulnerable in a way that isn't. But for the reasons you describe it's probably better as a secondary database than a primary one. I can't scroll and sort through all my photos on Flickr the way I can in Lightroom or Picasa. Also, as far as I know, re-downloading my photos from Flickr if I lost my local copy would be a one-at-a-time affair. But really it's whatever works for your purposes.

why obsess about documenting our lives? is it because we are *so* surprised about how they shake out? Or, is it to prove ("document") the fact that things turn out exactly as we had planned?

Good point jv, and certainly worthy of consideration on its own. I failed to mention that I'm not only interested in documenting my life; I also care about making good photographs and videos. I put photos on Flickr much more for their universal photographic (and occasionally photojournalistic) interest than for people who know me to see what I've been doing.

As for the documentation aspect, I think for me it's mostly about supplementing memory, or triggering memories that have gone into the subconscious, as well as remembering what things and people looked like at certain points in time, things like that. I like to counteract my mind's constant adaptation and remember how much things have changed, in myself as well as the outside world.

i build strawmen just for you, jay

i have the same reservations about constant documentation. i read this essay during my freshman year of college in the "how to write in an expository form" class, and it discussed the "photos as proof" thing jv mentioned. it made me feel horrible - my whole life i have been falling for this western mythology, etc etc. since that time, i have done some soul-searching, and i realized this: i do it because i have the technology to do it, and it's fun. i end up getting rid of a lot of stuff every year or so, but there are things i like to keep. actually to remember that things usually didn't turn out the way i planned. i suppose that is proof as well, but jesus christ, if i didn't have proof of certain things, i'd probably still be selling elephant tusks on the black market. so it's good to keep myself in check. then again, i really hope the fuzz don't find the secret flickr page where i am storing all that "documentation."

but seriously though, in terms of flickr, i wanted to keep it to pictures i took that i like. i am getting into photography. but then all sorts of people were like, "send me that picture!" so i just end up putting tons of useless photos up. a good reason to stop taking pictures. even though i want to. it's a vicious cycle. vicious.