I do not remember every e-mail I’ve sent this year.
They are, however, saved on my computer and in my inbox. If I forget one, I can search for it to bring it back into existence.
Different kinds of memory, both of computers and of humans, are the subject of the current research and work of Wendy Chun, associate professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University who spoke at UCLA last Thursday.
When information is transferred and translated, it has the possibility of being transformed. There becomes a great possibility for information to change across the boundaries on the Internet. Because of the amount of digital memory, it’s very easy to see these transformations.
“In terms of what new media can open up, what I’m fascinated by are the sort of gaps and the mistakes ““ things that don’t quite work. Because it’s when things don’t quite work that something else can happen that’s new and exciting,” Chun said.
This happens in various ways, like with remixing YouTube videos, rediscovering trends, Web pages and information, and even having multiple home pages or MySpace identities. Viewers stay fascinated with the repetition.
“Playing with the sheer plethora of information is actually what’s really exciting,” Chun said.
Computer memory in some ways mimics human memory. We lose sight of something until we regain need for it in our memory or it is randomly brought to our attention.
To Chun, the concept of memory is liberating in light of digital communication, both in that we don’t need to remember everything and also in that we can get rid of these documents, freeing up “memory” for things that are more important to us.
These types of memory are deeply intertwined with modes of digital communication.
“(As a professor), you wouldn’t text (message) me, you wouldn’t Skype me, you would send an e-mail,” Chun said. “I think that there are different … levels of response depending on what technology you’re talking about.”
To Chun, responding to all e-mails is not necessary, which is one of the ways she copes with the stresses of digital communication. She even laughs about how liberating it is to have an entire hard drive erased.
Kevin Chen, a first-year microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student, said he responds to most of his e-mails, but he is already aware of how the rest of his life as a UCLA student gets in the way of answering all of them. He does, however, save all his documents.
While our computers have their own memories, it is also important to remember that when a computer is online, it has a presence as a member of the public space, the Internet. There is a memory or an awareness that the computer has of what is going on around it in cyberspace.
“What I call enabling violation (is when) we’re both opening up our computers and being tracked in certain ways, but it also enables us to do things,” Chun said. “It’s only because those packets are being sent back and forth all the time that we can communicate at all.”
Being online is a wonderful thing, whether we are learning new information or getting too many e-mails. In life and on the Internet, communication may make us more vulnerable, but it is still worthwhile to communicate.
E-mail Rood at drood@media.ucla.edu.