Portfolio Assignment #7

This week I’ve learned to think about the digital space as more of a corporeal entity. Cooper’s lecture really impressed on me the physicality of the internet. It, in its composition, is not ephemeral like a cloud but is finite in scale. His next section about the black box really tied the whole concept of our fragile perceptions of social media’s use in our lives, especially within the current moment. We may not completely understand the complex nature and processes required to produce our inputs and the feedback we receive on social media, but in some cases, especially in terms of care it arguably has little weight on the impact.

For me personally, I’ve been straying away from over-analyzing my usage of social media for now. Reserving attempts to trying to fully understand all the ways it fulfills my subconscious, and how the data I’m generating is adding to the digital overflow. I reflect on “Live Through This”: Feminist Care of the Self 2.0 on a quote from Audre Lorde that reads “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare” Within reading this piece I began to shift my perspective of what digital media means for society. It can be a place of ethical resolve, therapeutic space, an authentic space, somewhere that you can reclaim yourself and reflect an honest reality.