Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- one Introduction: Unpicking the Automation of Memory Making
- two A Taxonomy of Memory Themes: Partitioning the Memorable
- three The Computational Surfacing of Memories: Promoting the Memorable
- four The Reception of Targeted Memories in Everyday Life: Classificatory Struggles and the Tensions of Remembering
- five Conclusion: Sorting the Past
- Notes
- References
- Index
one - Introduction: Unpicking the Automation of Memory Making
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- one Introduction: Unpicking the Automation of Memory Making
- two A Taxonomy of Memory Themes: Partitioning the Memorable
- three The Computational Surfacing of Memories: Promoting the Memorable
- four The Reception of Targeted Memories in Everyday Life: Classificatory Struggles and the Tensions of Remembering
- five Conclusion: Sorting the Past
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Social media profiles inevitably leave traces of a life being lived. These biographical data trails are a tempting resource for ‘platform capitalism’ (Langley & Leyshon, 2017; Srnicek, 2017). As they have integrated themselves deeply into everyday routines and interactions, social media have captured a wealth of biographical information about their users. The production and maintenance of profiles has led to the recording and sharing of detailed documentary impressions. This accumulation of the day-to-day has led to the conditions in which prior content can be readily repurposed to suit the rapid circulations of social media. Moving beyond their initial remit as communication and networking platforms, social media have expanded to become memory devices. As people's lives are captured, social media platforms continue to seek out ways to recirculate these traces and to render them meaningful for the individual user. The archive is vast, and so automated approaches to memory making have been deployed in order to resurface this past content, selecting what should be visible and rendering it manageable. It is here that this book makes an intervention – this is a book about algorithmic memory making within social media. What is particularly important, as we will show, are the ways that social media's automated systems are actively sorting the past on behalf of the user.
In a short fragment composed around 1932, a piece that went unpublished in his lifetime, Walter Benjamin wrote of the ‘excavation’ of memories. Memories, the fragment suggests, are something to be actively mined from the continually piling remnants of everyday life. Memories require action, he implies; they are something to be achieved, they are the product of active labour. As a result, digging metaphors permeate Benjamin's single paragraph of text. He pictures the individual pursuing their memories as a kind of archaeologist combing through the dirt to uncover and reveal the items below. He opens by claiming that, ‘Language has unmistakably made plain that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past, but rather a medium. It is the medium of that which is experienced, just as the earth is the medium in which ancient cities lie buried’ (Benjamin, 1999a: 576).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Social Media and the Automatic Production of MemoryClassification, Ranking and the Sorting of the Past, pp. 1 - 24Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2021