Does this "thing" belong to you?
Podcast:
For my final podcast I discuss (like a normal person) Edgerton's switch from a technology-centered to a "thing"-centered use history, and tie it to Turkle's Things That Matter. I discuss the potential problems with digitization, focusing on their intangibility and what this could mean for the future of things.
Music is "Doug's Theme" by the TV Mania Orchestra.
(17 votes)
Comments
Interfaces, Lacan, & the Weak Defense
Cool podcast; lots of food for thought here. You make an interesting comparison between digital files and ghosts, offering that just as a ghost is popularly conceived of as being tied to some object or location, our interaction with digital technologies is similarly bounded. This might refer to our use of audiobook content within a kindle, music within an ipod (already well on its way to becoming the naturalized generic term/design for digital audio players), messages on a smartphone, or files within a computer; overall, we interact with digital content through intermediaries, or what we’ve learned to call interfaces. As Rickert discusses, our interactions with these interfaces are always situated within networks of other interfaces; to take the “long zoom” approach, this description is a productive means to call attention to our use of a Kindle to access a .mobi (or PDF, etc) file, which is a digital version of a text, seen as a recent iteration (or digital translation) of print-bound texts, which are older interfaces used in order to access narrative or informational content, which enclose meanings encoded within particular arrangements of symbols, arising out of an interface system of linguistic symbols, and so on… This doesn’t even get into what we *do* (or can’t do) with that information or the other relations between and among interfaces we use to access it, nor the problematic infinite regression that emerges in constituting language itself as an interface.
To take a slightly different tack, one qualification might be that digital ephemera have no physical existence *in use.* This distinction is important, I think, in order to acknowledge the largely invisible infrastructural maintenance that makes them possible, from servers to web architecture, coding to fiber-optic cable. We frequently naturalize the outputs of these technologies, ignoring their intermediary carriers and their supporting processes. That is, until the power goes out or a hard drive fails, when we are suddenly shocked by the Lacanian real. Continuing this line of thought, perhaps ignoring invisible infrastructure is too simplistic; what if to be more concrete, we turn these supporting processes into imaginary narratives that more directly relate to our symbolic understanding of the world? For instance, if someone doesn’t understand the intricacies of TCP/IP, they may be more likely to conceptualize a narrative that posits an internet of magical immediacy, an understanding that focuses on use and function rather than architecture. In this way, complexity is subsumed to more surface streamlined readings that correspond to our partial perspectives. These perspectives inform our expectations not just of how a technology works, but also how it should be used (and what for).
Of course, just as you point out by bringing up Turkle, we haven’t stopped using old technology just because newer tech is around; indeed, Edgerton goes to great lengths to remind us of this central point. As you say, we still value physical, tangible objects and our interactions with them, as much as we may value our digital experiences. Here though, I think it might be important not to fall prey to Lanham’s weak defense; by constituting a dichotomy between old and new, we risk a consideration of technology as being either good or bad. Such a question perhaps centers on the difficulty we have in arbitrarily privileging some forms of technology over others. Without resorting to essentialism, is this a dilemma we can ever fully avoid?
"Legen...wait for it, and I hope you're not lactose-intolerant because the last part is...dary!"
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Erin,
I enjoyed your podcast, and your discussion of physical objects and memory. One "thing" I would like to add for consideration is the future of school yearbooks. They’ve been around for at least a century, but new media threatens their decline. Students who archive their photographs and friends’ comments on social media sites such as Facebook may place less value in a book that may only depict them once or twice beyond their school portrait, if at all. Facebook allows students to archive and index their own versions of high school history, rather than rely on the yearbook staff’s—and school-publication-approved—version of events. Similarly, social media is allowing people to rewrite yearbook captions, in a way: people are uploading pictures from their books and tagging their high school classmates in them. Students, of course, have always produced alternative versions of yearbooks—my friends and I created a digital presentation with our own photographs and video clips, for example (which debuted on VHS, of course, and has been recently converted to DVD.)
While I realize that physical keepsakes can also be damaged or destroyed, I share your concern for the intangibility of new media memorabilia. From my own experiences, I feel there something special about having a physical artifact in which is gathered signatures and messages from all my friends, frenemies, and teachers. Furthermore, as our last class discussed the ambiguity of ownership surrounding uploaded photos and written posts, Edgerton’s introduction ends with a fitting point: “Things belong to particular people in ways which technology does not” (xviii).
In fitting with the historiography theme of Edgerton’s book, I think the genre of the school yearbook hosts a number of different narratives. As a text, it documents the accessibility and affordability of technologies of its day—black and white photographs, color photographs, the printing capabilities. As a student-produced publication, it reveals students’ values about school and society. As a school-sponsored document, it reveals a school’s values through its restrictions and allowances. As an object students circulate, in addition to revealing the writing technologies such as pens the students use, the yearbook also allows for what Scollon and Scollon term “transgressive discourse”: writing such as graffiti that challenges social authority. As a physical object, the book reflects traces of physical alterations such as handwritten revisions to pages, signatures, and even adding and removing pages that new media texts perhaps reveal less accessibly.
As you point out in your conclusion, there are ways for both new and old to co-exist. The last yearbook that I advised included a CD with photographs submitted by the student-body (though still school-approved, of course). I will observe with interest the ways in which new media technologies continue to influence the school yearbook.
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--Kristen
Hierarchy of Significance
Good job! I would like to build on your podcast and Kristen’s comment. In your example, you raise the point that with the transfer of physical objects onto virtual spaces we are losing something. In the case of the vinegar soaked texts, if they were digitalized people would lose part of their history because there would not be a physical document for them to smell. In the case of the yearbooks, moving more of it online will cause individuals to lose the personalized touch that comes with people writing all over each others’ yearbooks in their own, unique handwriting.
With the advancement of technology more of the “physical” seems to be replaced by the virtual, as discussed in Longo’s “Human + Machine.” However, people still seem to reflect on “physical” interactions and materials positively and often with a feeling of nostalgia. Therefore, since people often seem to give priority to the physical in their personalized hierarchy of what is best, despite the alternatives, will the continued evolution of technology force a shift in our conceptions of “best”? Though Edgerton talks about assessing significance sensibly, especially when evaluating alternative technologies, the concept of significance is often a very biased one. Therefore, is technology molding us to a state where one day we will learn to prioritize differently, not focusing on the “physical” but instead valuing the ephemeral (as you call it), despite the fact that there is potentially a certain amout of loss with the shift?
Christa Weaver
Places of Memory
Erin,
I was intrigued by your podcast and thinking about “things” and how we can view technology as a “thing.” From our discussion last class, it was interesting on how sometimes it can be difficult to think of technology as a “thing.” I ran into this same dilemma last summer when using Paperless Post. It is a high-end version of evite. You actually have to pay to send out the invitations, and you pay extra for lined-envelopes and other special details. I have always been a big stationery person, so I have a very difficult time wanting to pay for virtual stationery—especially paying extra for lined-envelopes. I suppose that some extra work does go into writing the computer program and design, but it seems as if there really shouldn’t be a cost for stationery you can’t physically handle—especially when other programs offer it free of cost.
I think Kristen’s response brings up interesting application with a yearbook and it’s limits as an actual documentation of students’ lives; yet your experience with the online site that is now disappeared, is also striking. It seems that our relationship with technology becomes rather finicky because it is ever-changing and one day something is there, and the next it is gone. I wonder how fluidity affects how we create places of memory. Kristen talked about the yearbook as a place of memory and according to the French philosopher Pierre Nora, objects very often become places of memory for individuals as they embed their memories into objects in both literal and symbolic ways (3). Additionally, Susan Engle has written a book entitled /Context is Everything: The Nature of Memory/ in which she explains that in many instances when we recall the past, especially a past of which we were not a part, we “reconstruct an event on the basis of an artifact” (150). Essentially, we use an object as a catalyst to remembering an event or period of time in the past—even if we were not personally involved in that time period or event. I wonder how technology will begin to shape both our individual memories and collective memories, and if we can really view it as a “thing” that will and can become the object of our memory despite it’s versatility.
Engel, Susan. Context is Everything: The Nature of Memory. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1999.
Nora, Pierre. Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. 1 vol. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer.
New York: Columbia, 1983.
Glad I'm Not Alone
Erin,
Your podcast made some great connections. I especially liked the bit about physically intangible things being tied to a physical reality, i.e. ghosts. I also share your concerns: just because interfacing with technology allows individuals more expansive opportunities than ever before doesn't, I think, justify the practices that are undermined by said technology. I also prefer paper books to digital copies, handwrite in a journal rather than online or at least on my w.p. However, while you briefly say this specifically tied to new media, often you're referencing technology instead.
In terms of Edgerton's work though, I think use history is a great way of looking and tracking the trajectory of technology. However, I keep falling back to Bay and Rickert's work with the Fourfold, if only because it helps us look at technology as a thing that functions rather simply serves a function. I think our class makes steps towards this understanding every week, but I'm always wondering why we still reference technology as a wieldable thing and not also as a thing that wields. This is the thought your podcast has me tossing back and forth. As such, it's just a thought. Nothing more.
-Josh-