Always Already There, or Software as Memory

Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong

doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262015424.003.0008

Cited by 73 publications

(96 citation statements)

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“…(Martin) Martin's self-reflection frames check-in activity on Foursquare (and other services) as a means to review one's own life history through an externalisation to digital services. The acknowledgement of the 'backing up' of this history in digital databanks recalls again Chun's [22] notion of the enduring ephemeral nature of the perception of these services, and recalls Stiegler's [23] concept of epiphylogenesis through the inorganic organisation of memory in these cases. Social media data-streams are a way of organising in this manner.…”

Section: Remediating the Past As Future Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…I then started to think it is more about looking back; it isn't the checking-in process. (Doug) It is useful to recall Chun's [18] argument that software is always embodied, and in being embodied it grounds memory. The embodiment of the software in this case is in the physical location of the user, which is coupled with the affective dimension of the specific event being chronicled.…”

Section: The Locational Past and Its Present Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Locative mobile media and time: Foursquare and technological memory

Saker

Evans²

2016

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Foursquare is a location-based social network (LBSN) that can be used to explore locations and mark one’s movements in the form of ‘check-ins’. This paper investigates why some Foursquare users are choosing to record their locational past, and in so doing using it as a ‘mediated memory object’ (Dijck, 2009). The paper explores the different ways users then interact with their preserved spatial pasts, owing to Foursquare’s mode of preservation. A close engagement with phenomenological theory on the importance of engagement with technology and technicity as a shaping force on the experience of time conceptualises the use of Foursquare as a memory object. The functionality of Foursquare is positioned as a key element in how the location-based social network is significantly different from older memory related practices, as well as signalling its importance for the individuals that employ Foursquare in this manner.

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Section: Remediating the Past As Future Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: The Locational Past and Its Present Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Locative mobile media and time: Foursquare and technological memory

Saker

Evans²

2016

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“…Although the recent popularity of real-time is closely related to the rise of streams as found on social media, real-time has a longer history (Chun, 2011) and informed the becoming of the internet from its early stages onwards. Focusing on the socio-technical relations that compose real-time, we seek to trace the technical features that allow to automate, speed up and organize immediate access to new content and provide an indication to how real-time is fabricated across both front-and back-end.…”

Section: The Technicity Of Web Real-timementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the future, for many people, real time will be Internet Time (Negroponte in Nickell, 1998). Such universal notions of time online have been addressed as 'timeless time' (Castells, 2000), 'atemporal medium' (Sterling, 2010), 'simultaneity of non-simultaneous' (Brose, 2004;Laguerre, 2004). In recent years, the conceptualization of web time has increasingly drawn attention to its tensions and instabilities, as some authors claim that the web is characterized by an interplay between permanence and ephemerality (Chun, 2011;Schneider and Foot, 2004). Other authors further problematize universal notions of online time by noting how search engines and platforms rewrite the past, create 'multiple presents' (Hellsten et al, 2006) and provide a multiplicity of times (Leong et al, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other authors further problematize universal notions of online time by noting how search engines and platforms rewrite the past, create 'multiple presents' (Hellsten et al, 2006) and provide a multiplicity of times (Leong et al, 2009). 3 More recently, it has been the notion of real-time (Gehl, 2011;Berry, 2011a;Chun, 2011) that has become central to discussions of web time. 'Real-time' has not only emerged in academic discourses on time online, but has especially been promoted by the industry to label the post-Web 2.0 era.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Politics of Real-time: A Device Perspective on Social Media Platforms and Search Engines

Weltevrede

Helmond

Gerlitz

2014

Theory, Culture & Society

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This paper inquires in the politics of real-time in online media. It suggests that real-time cannot be accounted for as a universal temporal frame in which events happen, but explores the making of real-time from a device perspective focusing on the temporalities of platforms. Based on an empirical study exploring the pace at which various online media produce new content, we trace the different rhythms, patterns or tempos created by the interplay of devices, users' web activities and issues. What emerges are distinct forms of 'realtimeness' which are not external from but specific to devices organized through socio-technical arrangements and practices of use.Realtimeness thus unflattens more general accounts of the real-time web and research, and draws attention to the agencies built into specific platform temporalities and the political economies of making real-time.2

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A new Turing test: metaphor vs. nonsense

Massey

2021

AI & Soc

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My basic argument is that a computer cannot distinguish between metaphor and nonsense. This would be my new "Turing Test." I was very fond of a particular Italian poem, but I was told by an Italian friend that it was a hackneyed poem of little worth. I then taught myself to experience the poem alternately, as real poetry and as the silly nonsense that my friend claimed it really was. Having done so, I realized that I could do the same with any metaphor, such as "having a green thumb." Thinking about the nature of this switch, from the literal to the metaphorical, I also realized that it was the sort of change that could not be prescribed or even described: this, the basic aesthetic gesture, remains beyond the boundary of logical definition. It then dawned on me that it might provide a test for the validity of a "Turing Test," by any definition. Can a computer track a mind as it goes through this transformation? I could not envisage such a possibility. This would be a "Turing Test" based on the discipline of aesthetics rather than on technology. It may even be argued that the ability to experience metaphor is the very definition of the human.

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Always Already There, or Software as Memory

Cited by 73 publications

References 0 publications

Locative mobile media and time: Foursquare and technological memory

Locative mobile media and time: Foursquare and technological memory

The Politics of Real-time: A Device Perspective on Social Media Platforms and Search Engines

A new Turing test: metaphor vs. nonsense

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