Core Post 5: What's the point of labeling folders?

In a reality where orality its reclaiming its powerfulness, we still find ourselves in a duality of hoarding all we can store, and –hopefully– organize as coherently as possible. When keywords and search engines have become our mode of searching, we forget about the time taken in archiving, in curation and indexing. Out of all the brilliant quotes I could pull from Elizabeth Losh’s Hashtag (2019), I kept coming to #File, where Max Weber is brought into the conversation, for he allegedly “claimed that the maintenance of files was central to institutional memory” (113). However, having that internalized conversation alongside the progression from person to place, slogan to brand, I should have grasped the idea that the use of hashtags goes beyond institutional voices. However, when I take that into consideration, is it only the user interface that I’m taking into consideration? I wonder how Twitter’s institutional memory is stored. I wonder how their hashtags are archived, or if their organization purely based on chronology. 

Going back to the idea of non-institutionalized voices, I shouldn’t have found it shocking, and perhaps the fact that I did says something, but I was not expecting invisibility to coexist with what Suey Kim argues as “visibility and unexpected visibility” (Losh 108). Results generated by Twitter’s algorithms make things visible, hence, others invisible. Which makes me wonder about what the use of the hashtag actually is if the algorithms can still silence user, despite them using any specific hashtag. However, and this is a note-to-self, it is important to keep in mind that algorithms are not only a way for people to talk to people, but for people to talk to machines, and a way for machines to talk to each other (Losh 2). Which makes me wonder, if hashtags are just ways of creating metadata storytelling, how does big data process the storytelling? Or is the narrative aspect of the data completely erased when being collected? Are the paths and traces removed from the data? Or do they become part of the metadata in a way that enables the possibility of the narrative to be reconstructed?

Finally, I want to highlight my enthusiasm by the artifact, in the hashtag, in the chapters, and in the book-as-an-object. I found the structure fascinating, for traces and stories can be created, depending on the way of reading the text. I hope I realized this beforehand, to force myself to take on a different approach to reading the book. I’m guilty to have done a cover-to-cover take on the book, but I will like to see if the possibility of a different structure of reading can apply to another text in the series. I’m considering Silence by Josh Biguenet or Rust by Jean-Michel Rabaté; we’ll see how that goes. 

*shift+command+s > save as > untitled > desktop*

*shift+command+s > save as > lanz_core_post_5 > ctcs678 > week 12*