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THE MULTITUDE. “It is an essential vehicle for acknowledging the state of digital memory as transcendent of the traditional imaginary, or rather delimitation, of the collective as a usefully distinct and locatable form of memory. “ https://lnkd.in/dWiV2eZ View in LinkedIn

THE NEW MULTITUDE. “In this formulation, I draw upon the work of Pablo Virno, who states: “the contemporary multitude is composed neither of “citizens” nor “producers”; it occupies a middle region between individual and collective, for the multitude, then, the distinction between “public” and “private” is no way validated.” The multitude then offers a powerful vision that smashes the exhausted but endemic individual-collective binary that haunts the study of memory.” https://lnkd.in/dWiV2eZ View in LinkedIn

QUASI ARCHIVES. “As Van House and Churchill observe: “Archives sit in the boundary between public and private. Current archives extend well beyond a person, a space, an institution, a nation state. They are socio-technical systems, neither entirely social nor technical.” https://lnkd.in/dWiV2eZ View in LinkedIn

HYPERCONNECTED ARCHIVES. “The archives of a broadcast era mass media, once trapped in the archival space of a vault or library subject to the material conditions of order, classification, and retrieval, are rendered fluid through their hyperconnectivity.” https://lnkd.in/dWiV2eZ View in LinkedIn

THE ARCHIVE AS MEDIA. “Indeed, today, the archive can be seen as a medium in its own right, as it has been liberated from ‘archival space into archival time’. The notion of the archive as static is replaced by the much more fluid temporalities and dynamics of ‘permanent data transfer’, defining the new memory ecology.” https://lnkd.in/dWiV2eZ View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this small sampling of a much larger chapter by Professor Andrew Hoskins. In my view, it is a remarkably insightful portrayal of the wrenching social changes the digital age is foisting at breakneck speed on us, our children, and (sadly) our politics. Personally, I find it is all happening too quickly with too little wise commentary to wrap my arms around these events, from flash mobs to the ubiquitous screen. This author is a great start to figuring it out a bit better. View in LinkedIn

WITHOUT END. “The multitude appears as stronger than previous collectives as it is afforded carte blanche to keep the ‘conversation’ going: there is literally no ending.” https://lnkd.in/dWiV2eZ View in LinkedIn

THE RULE OF THE MOB. “The memory of the multitude softens history, changing the parameters of the who, when, what and why of remembering. With digital searching, accessing, participating, there is little unseen, untouched or uncommented upon by the multitude. This has diminished the former gatekeepers of memory, as David Lowenthal observes: “No longer what elites and experts tell us what it was, the past becomes what Everyman chooses to accept as true.” https://lnkd.in/dWiV2eZ View in LinkedIn

INFINITE NAKEDNESS. “The former self, its lives and lovers, all become entangled in digital databases that without conscience betray the wild exigencies of youth, not in unguarded gossip, but in perpetuity. As Jaron Lanier suggests: “A ‘Facebook generation’ young person who suddenly becomes humiliated online has no way out for there is only one hive.” https://lnkd.in/dWiV2eZ View in LinkedIn

THE TRAP. “Hyperconnectivity, then, for all its infinite extensionality, is actually strangely reductive. Our shadow archives grow by the second, with social media exerting a ‘residual abundance’: a digital and digitized gravitational pull that seems counter-intuitive to the pronouncements of the acceleration of life lived online.” https://lnkd.in/dWiV2eZ View in LinkedIn