New Memory Cultures and Death: Existential Security in the Digital Memory Ecology

It is often claimed that modern media massively return the repressed yet unavoidable fact of death, which modernity had institutionalised and placed out of sight. Death is everywhere in the media age: in news, in fiction, and not least in the budding practices of sociality and memory on the internet. This article will revolve around what we may learn about media and death from the vantage point of how memory cultures are currently being transformed. Spanning a heterogeneous terrain, the ‘digital memory ecology’ comprises among other things the construction of a digital afterlife, commemorative communities of grief and remembrance, interaction in guest books, digital candles and commentary fields on digital memorials. This article argues that today death is far from the hidden supplement to culture as Zygmunt Bauman contends or that it is even making a mediated return to us, but is rather ubiquitous in the digital age. As such it is both de-sequestered and deferred. By launching the deliberately ambiguous concept of existential security, the article outlines a research agenda for how we may approach these tendencies.It is often claimed that modern media massively return the repressed yet unavoidable fact of death, which modernity had institutionalised and placed out of sight. Death is everywhere in the media age: in news, in fiction, and not least in the budding practices of sociality and memory on the internet. This article will revolve around what we may learn about media and death from the vantage point of how memory cultures are currently being transformed. Spanning a heterogeneous terrain, the ‘digital memory ecology’ comprises among other things the construction of a digital afterlife, commemorative communities of grief and remembrance, interaction in guest books, digital candles and commentary fields on digital memorials. This article argues that today death is far from the hidden supplement to culture as Zygmunt Bauman contends or that it is even making a mediated return to us, but is rather ubiquitous in the digital age. As such it is both de-sequestered and deferred. By launching the deliberately ambiguous concept of existential security, the article outlines a research agenda for how we may approach these tendencies

On the importance of AI research beyond disciplines

As the impact of AI on various scientific fields is increasing, it is crucial to embrace interdisciplinary knowledge to understand the impact of technology on society. The goal is to foster a research environment beyond disciplines that values diversity and creates, critiques and develops new conceptual and theoretical frameworks. Even though research beyond disciplines is essential for understanding complex societal issues and creating positive impact it is notoriously difficult to evaluate and is often not recognized by current academic career progression. The motivation for this paper is to engage in broad discussion across disciplines and identify guiding principles fir AI research beyond disciplines in a structured and inclusive way, revealing new perspectives and contributing to societal and human wellbeing and sustainability

The Cosmos of a Public Sector Township: Democracy as an Intellectual Culture

The public sector plays an important role in responding to the rights of citizens and evolving norms of social interest (Qu 2015). Qu argues that the nature of public enterprise is never final and there is a constant negotiation between the private and the public emergence of life and rights. One such space where the tension between the private and the public manifests itself is the public sector township or the residential colony in India. The sociality of hierarchy in public sector organizations manifest itself in the public sector township and may nurture everyday aspirations, angsts and divides. The officer lives in a bigger hone, in a bungalow, and the clerk lives in a smaller home, many times with a larger family. [excerpt

Transitional Times. ‘New Media’ – Novel Histories and Trajectories

The alluring traits of ‘new media’ have spurred new research interests. This article discusses the discourse of ‘new media’ from the vantage point of critically reviewing three emissions from MIT Press during the years 1999-2003 within the series Media in Transition, as to the fundamental concepts used and introduced in these works. It cautions against any reductionist perspective on new media forms, and while highlighting the many merits of writing new media histories, the article shows that this discussion, also nascent within an interdisciplinary Swedish research environment, also carries other important features with implications for the relationships between communication and (time)space. It concludes that it is not enough to acknowledge that ‘new media’ call for a deep awareness of the historicity of the technological imaginary; deeper understandings of transitions in media also call for thoroughly expounding the socio-spatial ramifications of communication

Digital Limit Situations : Anticipatory Media Beyond 'The New AI Era'

In the present age AI (artificial intelligence) emerges as both a medium to andmessage about (or evenfrom) the future, eclipsing all other possible prospects.Discussing how AI succeeds in presenting itself as an arrival on the humanhorizon at the end times, this theoretical essay scrutinizes the ‘inevitability’ ofAI-driven abstract futures and probes how such imaginaries become livingmyths, by attending how the technology is embedded in broaderappropriations of the future tense. Reclaiming anticipation existentially, bydrawing and expanding on the philosophy of Karl Jaspers–and his conceptof thelimitsituation–I offer an invitation beyond the prospects and limits of‘the new AI Era’ of predictive modelling, exploitation and dataism. I submitthat the present moment of technological transformation and of escalatingmulti-faceted and interrelated global crises, is adigital limit situationin whichthere are entrenched existential and politico-ethical stakes of anticipatorymedia. Attending to them as a‘future present’(Adam and Groves 2007, 2011),taking responsible action, constitutes our utmost capability and task. Theessay concludes thatprecisely here lies the assignment ahead for pursuing apost-disciplinary, integrative and generative form of Humanities and SocialSciences as a method of hope, that engages AI designers in the pursuit of aninclusive and open future of existential and ecological sustainability. BioMe: Existential Challenges and Ethical Imperatives of Biometric AI in Everyday Lifeworld

The Netlore of the Infinite : Death (and Beyond) in the Digital Memory Ecology

In an era that celebrates instantaneity and hyper-connectivity, compulsions of networked individualism coexist with technological obsolescence, amounting to a sense of fragmentation and a heightened tension between remembering and forgetting. This article argues, however, that in our era of absolute presence, a netlore of the infinite is emerging, precisely in and through our digital memory practices. This is visible in the ubiquitous meaning-making practices of for instance personal digital archiving through the urges for self-perpetuation; it is evident at sites where the self may be saved for posterity; it is discernible in the techno-spiritual practices of directly speaking to the dead on digital memorials, as well as in the tendency among some users to regard the Internet itself as a manifestation of eternity, “heaven” and the sacred. This article shows that by approaching digital memory cultures existentially, and by attending to the complexities of digital time, we may gain insights into important and paradoxical aspects of our existential terrains of connectivity. This makes possible an exploration into how people navigate and create meaning in the digital memory ecology—in seeking to ground a sense of the eternal in the ephemeral.Existential terrains: Memory and Meaning in Cultures of Connectivit

Digital Limit Situations : Anticipatory Media Beyond 'The New AI Era'

In the present age AI (artificial intelligence) emerges as both a medium to andmessage about (or evenfrom) the future, eclipsing all other possible prospects.Discussing how AI succeeds in presenting itself as an arrival on the humanhorizon at the end times, this theoretical essay scrutinizes the ‘inevitability’ ofAI-driven abstract futures and probes how such imaginaries become livingmyths, by attending how the technology is embedded in broaderappropriations of the future tense. Reclaiming anticipation existentially, bydrawing and expanding on the philosophy of Karl Jaspers–and his conceptof thelimitsituation–I offer an invitation beyond the prospects and limits of‘the new AI Era’ of predictive modelling, exploitation and dataism. I submitthat the present moment of technological transformation and of escalatingmulti-faceted and interrelated global crises, is adigital limit situationin whichthere are entrenched existential and politico-ethical stakes of anticipatorymedia. Attending to them as a‘future present’(Adam and Groves 2007, 2011),taking responsible action, constitutes our utmost capability and task. Theessay concludes thatprecisely here lies the assignment ahead for pursuing apost-disciplinary, integrative and generative form of Humanities and SocialSciences as a method of hope, that engages AI designers in the pursuit of aninclusive and open future of existential and ecological sustainability. BioMe: Existential Challenges and Ethical Imperatives of Biometric AI in Everyday Lifeworld