Erasure, an Attempt to Surpass Datafication

The Journal of Popular Culture, 2012

Imaging Identity: Text, Mediality and Contemporary Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan (Eds. Johannes Riquet & Martin Heusser), 2019

Contemporary Visual Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 61-81

Gave me a sidelong look, poured the wine, missing her glass. Over the table it spilled, and with dainty finger she doodled-There, on the wet wooden page, circles of moisture she traced. My name she mingled with hers; I eagerly followed her finger, Watching its every stroke, and she well knew that I did. Quickly at last she inscribed a Roman 'five', with an upright 'One' in front of it-then, when I had seen this, at once With arabesque-like lines she effaced the letters and numbers… 1 THE CENTRALITY OF ERASURE When the decay and deletion of images are mentioned, we immediately think of badly ventilated archives and iconoclasts. Absent-minded archivists and religious or political fanatics come to mind. However, the present article addresses neither the history of an archival dilettantism deemed worthy of recording nor politically or religiously motivated iconoclasm. In both of these cases, the destruction of images is linked to the destruction of the material that carries them. The information conveyed by the images was meant to endure, but disappeared as its carrier medium was destroyed by negligence or violence. However, there have long been media primarily intended for recording written information and (simple) images not for a long, but a short period of time-media that served as notes, sketches, memory aids (e.g. sketchbooks or post-its). To be precise: there is a difference between storage and archive. 2 Those

As our society transfers its archives from print to digital media, an unintended consequence results; we lose a great amount of data. The effects of data loss can be profound; without access to vital data, our access to history may be severely diminished. Data loss threaten to undermine individual lives and major institutions. This essay discusses the phenomenon of data loss in the age of digital media. I identify the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, DC as a site of data loss at a national level, and suggest mourning as a means of coping with data loss. To facilitate the mourning of data loss at a national level, I propose a monument to lost data that will be located at the NARA.

NATIONAL LAW SCHOOL JOURNAL, 2019

Man dies, but his online assets survive and, often, intestate. These digital assets by themselves may not have too much significance, but the data they hold is invaluable to the legal heirs, often mired in secrecy; man lives a secret life, and these online digital assets are privy to the same. The enormous digital assets a user creates during his or her lifetime result in a sizable amount of digital footprint posthumously. The consequence of all these cybernated dossiers is as unpredictable as the death itself, for there's no uniform practice of preservation, removal, and inheritance of these digital assets by the data handlers like social media platforms and other content hosting websites. Adding to this is the lack of proper definition and legal consensus as to what constitutes digital assets and how the deceased user's digital estate should be handled after his/her death. The objectives of this paper are to analyze the impact of death on digital assets and the association between unbequeathed online accounts and issues of identity theft and copyright violations of deceased user's accounts. This paper has adopted a doctrinal research method. The paper also broached the concerns about how these data should be managed in the best interests of legal heirs of the departed. The study shows that there's a lack of awareness among the netizens as to how to plan their digital estate while they are alive, and the personal laws of succession are also not drafted or revised foreseeing this new genre of assets.

Big Data and Society, 2019

We project the future accumulation of profiles belonging to deceased Facebook users. Our analysis suggests that a minimum of 1.4 billion users will pass away before 2100 if Facebook ceases to attract new users as of 2018. If the network continues expanding at current rates, however, this number will exceed 4.9 billion. In both cases, a majority of the profiles will belong to non-Western users. In discussing our findings, we draw on the emerging scholarship on digital preservation and stress the challenges arising from curating the profiles of the deceased. We argue that an exclusively commercial approach to data preservation poses important ethical and political risks that demand urgent consideration. We call for a scalable, sustainable, and dignified curation model that incorporates the interests of multiple stakeholders.

2013

What happens to the great amount of information on social media and other Internet platforms after our death? Even while alive it is hardly possible for anyone to control the storage and dissemination of personal data on the Internet. How and for what reasons should we therefore try to make arrangements regarding what happens to this data when we pass away? Our next of kin do not usually know much about our various online activities, nor do they have access to the passwords necessary to deactivate profiles or delete or move information. At the same time, platform providers follow different practices and their terms and conditions vary considerably. This paper summarizes the results of an interdisciplinary research project 1 aimed at clarifying the many open questions that arise in connection with this topic and proposes an extended perspective on how the many facets of this subject matter might be approached.

Entry for a recently published encyclopedia on media and technology, deals with "archives and erasure".

Digital Identity and Social Media

Within this chapter, the authors consider the emergence of new cultures and practices surrounding death and identity in the digital world. This includes a range of theory-based discussions, considering how we remember and document the absence of information and how communities and individuals deal with the virtual identities of their loved ones after death. This highlights the evolvement of digital practices in relation to public grief and the building of public (communal) identity, including the impact of digital recording and sharing of ones identity(s). Furthermore, the chapter stresses the relevance of the mediation of memory, discussing how mediation impacts one’s own identity and the communal cultural identity of society at large. Finally, the chapter concludes by considering what role personal choice plays in the way we deal with digital data, and more widely, our digital selves after death.

Writing and Digital Media, 2006

As our society transfers its archives from print to digital media, an unintended consequence results; we lose a great amount of data. The effects of data loss can be profound; without access to vital data, our access to history may be severely diminished. Data loss threaten to undermine individual lives and major institutions. This essay discusses the phenomenon of data loss in the age of digital media. I identify the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, DC as a site of data loss at a national level, and suggest mourning as a means of coping with data loss. To facilitate the mourning of data loss at a national level, I propose a monument to lost data that will be located at the NARA. This monument is to have an on-site component and an online component: a network of memorial entries created by individuals who have suffered data loss. Our media is your memory. (Sony slogan). Attached to every person like a tiny galaxy will be the whole of his pastor what he takes to be the whole of his past. His attachment to it will constitute the whole of his present-or of what he takes to be the present. The neat, almost soundless instrument will contain all of each man's hope, his innocence, his garden. Then one by one, but with growing frequency, men will begin to lose their machines. (Merwin, 1969, pp. 130-131