Molly Sauter’s Instant Recall – How do we remember when apps never forget? (2017). In short: Our potential for change is being smeared with algorithm inflicted nostalgia.
As the work memory keeping is offshored, Instagram by Instagram, to social media companies and cloud storage, we are giving up the work of remembering ourselves for the convenience of being reminded.
There are three different “memory” systems that I’m talking about here: predictive text […] reminiscence databases like Facebook Memories […] and data doppelgangers constructed for ad targeting […] Each interacts differently with the data it collects, representing it to guide or nudge you according to different models.
[…] predictive text systems push the user in two directions simultaneously: be more generic — that is, adhere better to the corpus of generic source data —and be more like you have been in the past. […] Be more like the cliché of you.
[…] the ad-targeting data doppelganger is more like a data echo […] a better phrase would be data homunculus, the homunculus being the exaggerated, misshapen model of a human being intended to show the distribution of nerve endings in the human body. […] the data homunculus can only reflect those aspects of yourself that are legible to the systems that seek to model you.
The databases exist outside of time and outside of narrative. […] Social media posts are designed to be in and of the moment, and, when presented back as “memories,” carry all the authority of eyewitness testimony.
Memories change with the remembering, and evocative objects change as we age together. […] Digital memory objects, on the other hand, although they might abruptly obsolesce, do not age in the same way. They remain flatly, shinily omni-accessible, represented to us cleanly both in the everlasting ret-conned context of their creation and consumption.
[…] if living in one present moment is good, living in endlessly arrested presents must be even better. A continual living in the present means there is no space for reflection, for coherence-building.
The approach reminds me of 3D Printers Effect on Environmental Thinking text from 2012 (which is a crazy rant). The point in both texts seems to be that EULA’s are pushing for a culture were we’ll give up on authoring ourselves (with tools that we own) and grant corporations to the right to build our identities.
Come to think of it.. EULA’s and artworks are in a weird relationship: Artworks belong (mentally and legally) to the artist and the owner cannot repair/change the piece without destroying it. Artworks are dependent on specialists, they inflict nostalgia and hinder our potential for change too! Tangible artworks are easy to protest against (they can be burned and we can turn our backs to them). Events and performances are more hostile, they claim to be ephemeral but are mediated on our personal social media feeds and their untouchable aura lingers in spaces.
Composer Ville Raasakka is working on a piece called Hammer, hammer, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?. Wondering if he’s using Sound of Work: Blacksmith ed1? I should drop hin an email. Send him a message with links to SOW and some hints on how the sound library relates to the concept of new-work.