The netlore of the infinite: death (and beyond) in the digital memory ecology

Abstract

In an era that celebrates instantaneity and hyper-connectivity, compulsions of networked individualism coexist with technological obsolescence, amounting to a sense of fragmentation and a heightened tension between remembering and forgetting. This article argues, however, that in our era of absolute presence, a netlore of the infinite is emerging, precisely in and through our digital memory practices. This is visible in the ubiquitous meaning-making practices of for instance personal digital archiving through the urges for self-perpetuation; it is evident at sites where the self may be saved for posterity; it is discernible in the technospiritual practices of directly speaking to the dead on digital memorials, as well as in the tendency among some users to regard the Internet itself as a manifestation of eternity, "heaven" and the sacred. This article shows that by approaching digital memory cultures existentially, and by attending to the complexities of digital time, we may gain insights into important and paradoxical aspects of our existential terrains of connectivity. This makes possible an exploration into how people navigate and create meaning in the digital memory ecology-in seeking to ground a sense of the eternal in the ephemeral.

Existential media: Toward a theorization of digital thrownness

“…With important exceptions (e.g. Floridi, 2015; Lagerkvist, 2013, 2014; Langlois, 2014; Miller, 2015; Peters, 1999, 2015b; Pinchevski, 2014; Scannell, 2014), existential approaches have played a minor role in analyzing the media, or our media cultures. However, the existential is evident in the concerns of representational media across history (from, for example, petroglyphs and Greek tragedies to modern novels and fictional film) that enable sense-making in relation to the precariousness of life and the basics of “why are we here.” It is visible in ritualistic events of television and imagined communities of newspapers, where the media and popular culture fill the function of religions and offer communion with the living but also, importantly, with the dead.…”

“…This focus on pace has been challenged by media theorists, who argue that our lived sense of time relies on uneven material privilege across the “power-chronographies” of our technologized existence (Sharma, 2014). While the regime of the now is indeed often dominant, there are also counter-tendencies such as the presence of a sense of infinity online, or the “enduring ephemeral” as a constituent of digital time (Chun, 2010; Lagerkvist, 2014). Digital temporalities thus actualize the antinomy of the transient and the eternal.…”

“…The longevity and hauntings of data and the knowledge that search engines remember all our virtual steps leave us ambivalent and quite vulnerable about where our traces may be situated and how they may bear on our lives and afterlives (Mayer-Schönberger, 2008). This concerns those parts of us that are circulating without our knowing precisely where and how, or even whether they are there: our digital surrogates (Lagerkvist, 2014). Digital culture thus challenges a “there” with clear demarcations.…”

Vildmarksgalleriet i Mo: Lokalt meningsskapande i ett myller av djur

“…Döden är inte längre något som ska döljas till varje pris, men dess uttryck dramatiseras och dödens gestaltning blir en del av livsstilsprojektet (Svensson 2007:40ff, Sloane 2018. Dödens närvaro har ökat i samhället, en utveckling som på senare år accelererats när internet blivit en plats där både sorg och existentiella frågor hanteras i nya former (Lagerkvist 2015, Frihammar & Silverman 2018.…”

A theory of temporal telepresence: Reconsidering the digital time collapse

“…Castells (2010a, 2010b: 494), for instance, understands time in information society as a form of ‘timeless time’, a ‘systematic perturbation in the sequential order of phenomena’. Lagerkvist (2015) speaks of a specifically ‘digital time’, Kaun and Stiernstedt (2014) of ‘social media time’ and Mitchell et al (2012: 428) of an ‘a-temporal space’ of the Internet. While terminology may vary across these and other related works (indeed, countless further examples can be named), they are all premised on some notion of a collapse.…”