For my link #5, I decided to link to Rebecca Hydamacka’s Speculative Future, in particular “The History,” with my final project, The Hashtag as a Narrative.
You can view Rebecca’s Speculative Futures HERE, and my Final Project HERE.
Summary
Rebecca really dove deep into this task creating two speculative futures, one that features a twine game (co-created by yours truly) and the other about generational future and how knowledge has been preserved. She speaks about many different technologies we could see in the future, from Memglasses, solar powered wrist interfaces, solar cycle, and nanofiber, to The History – which is what I am linking to. She includes images, conversations, the twine game, documents – creating a true multi-modal piece of work.
Reflection
Firstly, if you haven’t read any of Rebecca’s posts the one thing you need to know is that she is a vivid storyteller. Her imagination is full of inventive and alluring creations and this speculative future does not disappoint. I had the opportunity to work with Rebecca in two separate courses now and find that our experiences and the ways in which we tackle projects and tasks complement each other very well. Where I am more concrete, Rebecca is more fluid. Where she pulls at your heart, I aim for the mind. You get the point. This particular task allowed me to make connections to my final project both theoretically and through experience. Furthermore, we were able to communicate back and forth in comments to further our connections to these pieces – which just adds to our connection.
Rebecca’s speculative future was quite detailed and had many different aspects to it. I chose to link to one aspect within her story, “The History:”
A digital collection of voices and images of the world
The moment I read this, I thought immediately about how we are all contributing to a digital history by engaging in online activities, such as social media. I thought about how every post that we make on instagram is adding to this catalog of events and the emotions surrounding those events. This led me to think about my final project, and how when we engage with hashtag activism we are adding to the narrative, which is this creation of a digital history.
Rebecca went on to discuss how in this future, it becomes “crucial to have all people’s voices observing and creating this collective memory so that it is reflective of all.” If I think about the hashtag and how only those who choose to use it are the ones adding to the narrative, I wonder how big the digital history would become if it was something all people had to do. If it was crucial to hear all sides of the story for example – and to really think objectively here; what if we could decipher between the truth of the story behind it? What if we could look at those who are using the hashtag and be able to vividly see their connection to it? Like a webcam or microchip (like Rebecca speaks about). How then, would the “final story” as Rebecca puts it, look, as it filters through to find the truth? An interesting and possibly dark hole that some might not want to go down.
As Rebecca and I were commenting on her post, she mentioned that the hashtag & technology are crowd-sourcing history – a term I hadn’t thought of – though it’s something that I spoke to in my final project. Furthermore, to take it so far as to create hashtags with our grandparents to ensure that all voices and generations are being heard and that our entire history is being recorded, digitally, would be a great thing to do – and is something that could be done now, not necessarily in the future.
Overall, I believe that the connection between “The History” and the use of the hashtag as a narrative connects us to the idea that people are creating digital histories and that in the future – people are going to look back on these creations and hope to understand our experiences and truths as they have been shared.