Updating to Remain the Same

Abstract

What it means when media moves from the new to the habitual—when our bodies become archives of supposedly obsolescent media, streaming, updating, sharing, saving. New media—we are told—exist at the bleeding edge of obsolescence. We thus forever try to catch up, updating to remain the same. Meanwhile, analytic, creative, and commercial efforts focus exclusively on the next big thing: figuring out what will spread and who will spread it the fastest. But what do we miss in this constant push to the future? In Updating to Remain the Same, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun suggests another approach, arguing that our media matter most when they seem not to matter at all—when they have moved from “new” to habitual. Smart phones, for example, no longer amaze, but they increasingly structure and monitor our lives. Through habits, Chun says, new media become embedded in our lives—indeed, we become our machines: we stream, update, capture, upload, link, save, trash, and troll. Chun links habits to the rise of networks as the defining concept of our era. Networks have been central to the emergence of neoliberalism, replacing “society” with groupings of individuals and connectable “YOUS.” (For isn't “new media” actually “NYOU media”?) Habit is central to the inversion of privacy and publicity that drives neoliberalism and networks. Why do we view our networked devices as “personal” when they are so chatty and promiscuous? What would happen, Chun asks, if, rather than pushing for privacy that is no privacy, we demanded public rights—the right to be exposed, to take risks and to be in public and not be attacked?

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Facebook: Updating Identity Economics

“…Critical social media scholarship interrogates the impact of this new, personalized identity economics on group dynamics-how it galvanizes more myopic voter constituents, spreads hate campaigns, or weaponizes shame (Chun, 2016;Tufekci, 2018;Vaidhyanathan, 2018). Data collection is not what is at stake, but a new ritual of control that incentivizes fervid group dynamics for power and profit.…”

From Netflix Streaming to Netflix and Chill: The (Dis)Connected Body of Serial Binge-Viewer

“…This is how, by playing on people's habits of returning to experiences that matter, Netflix's recommendation feature constitutes our viewing preferences as always already mediated. On the other hand, the anticipatory structure of networked entertainment technologies does not necessarily disempower viewers but can offer a means of imagining and inhabiting this capture differently (Chun, 2016;Seaver, 2018). In both scenarios, our participation in digital attention assemblages mediates our desire for contact.…”

“…In the first part of the article, three main features of Netflix streaming-recommendation, attention, and attachment-will be analyzed with regard to the ways in which the platform constitutes its brand through ongoing contact with its subscribers. Focusing on how the practice of binge-watching is embedded in Netflix's promotional stance on personalization and quality, I will show that at stake here is not so much what Netflix does to facilitate our repeated viewing activities (although this is important, too, considering the habit-forming function of attention-based technologies in general; see, for example, Chun, 2016). Rather, I address the mediated entanglements within which the brand is re-enacted through the practice of binge-watching as part of a larger assemblage of relations between bodies, technologies, and their intensive (dis)connections.…”

Critical Failure: Computer-Aided Instruction and the Fantasy of Information

“…20 This points to the importance of the ever-changing material forms of information and media technology, a way they have of keeping themselves new. 21 But the persistence of the commonsense assertion that computers in any form can reinvent instruction also points to a willful, collective suspension of disbelief.…”