Life on automatic: Facebook's archival subject
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v19i2.4825Keywords:
archive, automaticity, Baudrillard, browsing, convenience, Derrida, Facebook, Heidegger, ontology, ZuckerbergAbstract
Facebook’s ideology rests on and results in a particular ontology: Mark Zuckerberg wants the site to help create an “open” and “connected” world. This article explains the implications of this world-changing mission by examining services that map the Facebook user’s path across the Internet (like Connect) and archive the user’s life (like Timeline). Reading these services through the psycho-ontological claims of Baudrillard and Derrida suggests that Facebook’s open, connected individual – the archival subject – is bent towards convenience and interest. Pairing these readings with a reinterpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology in terms specific to Facebook, the article argues that the archival subject provides evidence of a view of the world characterized predominantly by an orientation toward browsing rather than use or control. Facebook should be analyzed in terms of this pre-theoretical understanding of the world – one that it both symptomatizes and institutes. In advancing this argument, the article calls attention to the broader (ontological) and more intensive (subjective) correlates of more traditional (politico-economic or ideological) criticisms of social media.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors retain copyright to their work published in First Monday. Please see the footer of each article for details.