Critical Reflection

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.