Past, Present and Future

Life-stowing from a Digital Media Perspective: Past, Present and Future Alberto Frigo SÖDERTÖRN DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS Life-stowing from a Digital Media Perspective: Past, Present and Future Alberto Frigo Subject: Media and Communication Studies Research Area: Critical and Cultural Theory School: Culture and Education Södertörn University Södertörns högskola (Södertörn University) The Library SE-141 89 Huddinge www.sh.se/publications © Alberto Frigo Cover image: Alberto Frigo Cover layout: Jonathan Robson Graphic form: Per Lindblom & Jonathan Robson Printed by Elanders, Stockholm 2017 Södertörn Doctoral Dissertations 139 ISSN 1652–7399 ISBN 978-91-88663-00-9 (print) ISBN 978-91-88663-01-6 (digital) Abstract While both public opinion and scholars around the world are currently pointing out the danger of increasingly popular life-logging devices, this book articulates this debate by distinguishing between automatic and manual life-logging approaches. Since new definitions of life-logging have excluded the latter approach and have been mainly focused on effortless life-logging technologies such as Google Glass and Quantified Self applications in general, the second part of this thesis theoretically frames life-stowing. Through extensive etymological research, I have defined life-stowing as a manual and effortful practice conducted by life-stowers, individuals who devote their life to sampling reality in predefined frameworks. As part of this book, an historical over- view introduces life-stowers and distinguishes between Apollonian and Dionysian varieties of these practitioners. Lastly, in order to understand the future reception of life-stowing, particularly in relation to digital media, I have disclosed my ongoing life- stowing project to a small audience. Keywords: life-stowing, tebahism, effortfull, life-logging, quantified self, self- tracking, surveillance, sousveillance, archiving, syncretism, constructivist theory of perception, database aesthetics. Preface And I understood that those sciences are very interesting and attractive, but that they are exact and clear in inverse proportion to their applicability to the question of life: the less this applicability to the question of life, the more exact and clear they are, while the more this try to reply to the question of life, the more obscure and unattractive they become. Tolstoy 2005:23 I stow, therefore I am: since 2004, when I was 24 years old, I have been continuously documenting 18 aspects of reality and I have devised 18 ways to elaborate them. As of 12 October 2016, for example, I have photographed 330,000 objects my right hand has used, I have written down 14,300 dreams, I have video-recorded 20,880 public spaces where I sat, I have made 9,930 drawings of my ideas, I have recomposed 6,720 songs I have heard, I have portrayed 992 new acquaintances, I have picked 134 square meters of trash from the sidewalk. I could go on boring the reader with such a list. My point here, however, is that in the near future, lists of this kind might not be all that bizarre; as technology progresses, ordinary people are more likely to hoard more of their personal data; or better, let me put it this way: as technology progresses, technology is more likely to hoard more and more personal data from common people. Several books have in recent years focused on personal data stored via life-logging devices and Quantified Self services (e.g. Rettberg 2014; Nafus, Nefs 2016; Lupton 2016). This book is my attempt to research a similar topic but from a different point of view. In the first place, I write from the perspective of a practitioner who has anti- cipated this phenomenon. Second and most importantly, I write from the vantage point of a practitioner who has been documenting his life manually, without the assistance of automated sensors or algorithms, and therefore doing the work of the technology. Thirdly, I write from the perspective of a practitioner who has crafted his practice based on his design of an architecture in which to contain 36 years of the collected data. Given these three perspective, in this book I call my manual practice “life-stowing” as opposed to technologically driven storing and in relation to older historical traditions. While written within Media and Communication Studies, the rich content of this book is also a form of stowing the results of many years of thinking and exposing myself through my demanding media practice. Methodologically as well, as in my life- stowing project, this book makes use of several methods to draw a comprehensive trajectory from what I believe to be the historical origins to the present and future scenarios of life-stowing media. In this respect, it proposes an alternative perspective to the field of Media and Communication that takes into account the empirical knowledge that constant exposure to a media practice inevitably brings. In keeping with this line of thinking it should be viewed as a form of autoethnography. Sammanfattning Den samtida samhälls- och forskningsdebatt, där de allt mer populära teknologierna för life-logging ofta framställs som farliga, vidgas och utvecklas i denna bok genom ett särskiljande av automatiska och manuella tekniker för life-loggning. Eftersom nya definitioner av life-loggning i stor utsträckning har exkluderat manuella tekniker och fokuserat på egenmätning som inte kräver så mycket av användaren, såsom Google Glass, består avhandlingens andra del av ett teoretisk utforskande av begreppet life- stowing. Genom omfattande etymologisk forskning definieras life-stowing i avhandlingen som en manuell och ansträngande praktik utförd av life-stowers, personer som vigt sina liv åt att samla och spara bitar av verkligenheten enligt fördefinierade ramar. I den historiska översikten introduceras två typer av life-stowers, den Apollonianska och den Dionysiska. Slutligen, för att förstå det framtida mottagandet av life-stowing i relation till digitala medier, avslöjas i avhandlingen författarens egna life stowing- projekt för en mindre publik. Acknowledgments I primarily thank my dissertation supervisor Stina Bengtsson for her patient and care- ful reading of my text and the constructive relationship we were able to maintain through my doctorate years. I thank Maria, my second supervisor, for helping envision the case-study of this book and refine its history. A word of thanks to Charles Rougle for excellent proof reading, to my 60% seminar opponent, Anna Orrghen of Uppsala University and my final seminar opponent Lars Nyre at the University of Bergen. Also, a huge thank you goes to the Media and Communication Department at Södertörn University and its kind faculty and staff, who have enabled me to produce this dissertation. I owe a debt of gratitude to my former student and friend Jacek Smolicki, who has been assiduously following in my footsteps. I sincerely thank Myrthe Nagtzaam, who has sustained me during these years and has patiently waited for me at a distance. I also thank my son August, who has once again in his life dealt with a parent doing a Ph.D. I am grateful to my parents, who have paid for the doors and windows of the barn where the case-study was conducted. Huge thanks also to Davide di Saró, who contracted lyme disease while helping me renovating, and a word of appreciation to Aldo Maistro, who, despite his age came to the rescue in moments of physical hardship. No least, my greatest gratitude to the small mountain community of Contrada Costenieri, who have facilitated in many ways the realization of this project, giving me food, wood for the cold nights spent there, taking care of my dirty laundry and chatting with me in moments of extreme fatigue. Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 15 1.1 Introducing Life-logging ................................................................................................ 17 1.2 The Life-logging Trinity: the Official History and Definition .................................. 19 1.3 Life-logging: The Academic Debate ............................................................................. 21 1.4 Bloggers, Qsers, Cyborgs and Life-stowers ................................................................. 23 1.4.1 The Blogger or Casual Practitioner ....................................................................... 24 1.4.2 The Qser or Enthusiast Practitioner ..................................................................... 25 1.4.3 The Cyborg or Life-logging Developer ................................................................ 26 1.4.4 The Life-stower or Autonomous Practitioner ..................................................... 27 1.5 Positioning Myself as a Life-Stower and a Researcher ............................................... 28 1.6 Introducing the New Old Concept of Life-stowing ................................................... 30 1.7 Life-stowing: Research Interest and Aims ................................................................... 31 1.8 Life-stowing as my Overarching Methodology .......................................................... 32 1.9 Structure of the Book ...................................................................................................... 34 Past ............................................................................................................................................... 37 2. A History of Life-stowing ....................................................................................................

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