Jose Van Dijck, said that “the computer is rapidly becoming a
giant storage and processing facility for recording and retrieving ‘bits of
life’” (311). While finding digital photos for this blog, I went through a lot
of folders just to find the photos that I needed. The three digital photos showed
in my blog, were scattered in three separate folders. Although they were taken
in the same day, from the same location, I had somehow stored them in separate folders.
Computers were created to have a memory so it could help the human brain to store
things when there is too much data for the human brain to contain. Of course,
the data can then we retrieved at a later date, to recall your memories of certain
moments. However, with such a mass storage, it can be hard to find the sources
that you need. Like the way I tried to locate three simple photos, it took me
long time to retrieve it because there was too much data stored in my computer.
The three photos were just a tiny proportion of data combined with all my other
information. This shows that the computer works as a large memory machine and
it helps me to store the different memories I had with my job at Disney. The good
thing about this mass storage is that it helped me contain memories that I may have
forgotten, or was unable to retrieve immediately from my human brain. By flicking
through a number of photos, some of my memories were recalled by just looking
at photos that I had forgotten I’d saved.
Although I eventually found the three photos, I wondered if
there was a reason I stored them in three separate places. Because according to
my memory, the logic thing to do is to store the photos from the same day and location
in the same folder. But it seemed like my previous actions tells me otherwise. Dijck
continues by saying that “digitization is surreptitiously shaping our acts of cultural
memory-the way we record, save and retrieve remembrances of our lives past”
(312). He also adds that “annotations, whether in audio or textual form, may
differ significantly depending on the moment of attachment” (317). In my
creative exercise, I have reconstructed a memory and created a new storage
place to remember by job at Walt Disney World. I added in photos and attached
captions to them. These captions describe my memories of the photos. Relating this
to Dijck’s point, I may have formed a memory which differed slightly from the
last time I looked at the photo because I recalled it in two different times.
My mood could be different both times which means that I can view the memory
from two different points of view. Therefore, my captions of the photos which are
now stored in this blog have shaped a new memory. This means that, the next
time I look at these photos and refer to the captions, I am remembering my
memories based on the time I wrote the captions, not on the original memory. This
point shows how memories can change due to the way they are stored, which leads
to the next point of how memories can be ephemeral.
Wendy Chun argues that “digital memory is erasable, forgetful
and ephemeral” (167). Because memories are constantly refreshed, (like what I
have done in my creative exercise), the real meaning of memories can fleet and
be easily erased. It shows the dangers of memories fading away when data is
constantly repeated and copied. The erasure of photos does not only apply to
the way their memories are copied. But they can also be easily deleted from a
computer. With one push of a button, you can delete from 1-100 photos at the
same time. I want to refer this point to the value my sources contain. Starting
with digital photos, they were stored to help me remember the great times I had
interacting with my guests. But at the same time I had many copies of similar
photos. They were all Mickey and Minnie playing with different kids. Then there are the drawings that kids drew for
me. They are unique and rare and would be memories that I can’t get anywhere
else. At the end of the day, Minnie and Mickey would always look
the same in photos. I could tell someone that I wasn’t even ‘friends’ with
Minnie in that photo and they would believe me. But with drawings, they each
have their individual memories. This shows the different values seen between
digital and analogue memories. Physical drawings “expresses attachment to the
touch and feel of analogue products” (Dijck, 312). I would find it a lot harder to burn or throw
away the drawings because I will never get them back. But with the digital
photos, they could always be replaced in my eyes as there are millions of
photos out there which show Mickey and Minnie posing for photos. Even comparing
the way they are stored, the digital photos are mixed with a thousand other
photos, where as the drawings I received are filed away neatly in a diary which
can be easily located. The two different media formats draws up on the way they
are valued, how differently they are stored due to their formats and how ephemerality
is applied.
Reference
Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. The
Enduring Ephemeral, or the Future is a Memory. The University of Chicago,
2008. Print.
Dijck, Jose Van. “From Shoebox to Performative Agent: the
Computer as Personal Memory Machine”. New
Media and Society (2005): 311-329. Print.
