My anxieties about day to day existence have led to some through-lines for the conceptual questions I want to answer (or begin to answer) through my thesis. Similar to some people in my group, I am thinking about ways to build on my Critical Experiences project and the ways that can connect to work I care to dedicate myself beyond this program. In the group, I realized that some of the pressure of that sentiment was creating blockers for me both in terms of longer term projects (Thesis) and shorter term projects (50 Days) – striking the balance between creation and meaning-making, feelings of how ‘worth’ something is to create, and also building new habits around making at once was overwhelming for me. 

The group discussion was incredibly helpful for me, and I’m looking forward to more regular touchpoints with my thesis group. I had to leave towards the end of our first thesis class and finished the post-it activity afterwards through a brainstorm with my group. 

Here are some conceptual questions that I’m considering for my thesis, with sub-questions that could generate possibilities: 

Conceptual question #1: How has our fear of losing memories shifted as we become more compartmentalized and fragmented beings with multiple selves that we carry with us at any given moment? 

  • Our archive is different: We carry memories differently on our person at any given time, and in a sense have a much more richly documented selfhood. 
  • Impact of losing an album of photos for our parents versus losing an iPhone that isn’t backed up
  • Consent for use of and reproduction of memories of those who have passed and their retellings – what happens to their digital archive? 
  • What does it look like for people to be documented forever now (children) and also relate to memories of them and raising them – how early is their self fragmentation starting? 
    • Parents can even reserve digital space for kids before they get to it – expectation of ways to have a memory (email addresses before they’re old enough, less common names so they can ‘get their gmail account’ 
  • People who journal in multiple different places, people who have multiple tabs open all the time, what are the parallels of being able to switch between so many selves in all moments? 
  • Google Drive vs. iCloud vs. DropBox vs. Journals vs. Notion vs. Desktop vs. iPhone Notes App vs. Planner – what gets lost, do we notice, does it matter?

Conceptual question #2: How does the digital body confabulate and what impact does it have on our understanding of ‘truth’ about a self in a hybrid world? 

  • Digital identity construction and community – the Tumblr kids vs. the Tik Tok kids 
  • When you have a digital body, you can delete and restart that body so easily (sometimes) but some people cannot, if they have become hypervisible or viral without even consenting to it (Lilly Chin’s research) – who deserves the right to be forgotten? What if you don’t ever consent to being known but are (connects to some of Beth’s research too) 
  • For those who do have the freedom to delete and restart the body as a new personality with new fans and new people who expect something different, what is the benefit or harm of always being able to restart in a way the physical body cannot (except MAYBE through moving to a new place and living a fully new life?) 
  • How many lives is too many lives? What impact does this have on “actual life” – whatever people would name that to be?
  • Learned digital literacies through having so many bodies and essentially user testing through that process which selves you want to dissolve and which selves you want to nourish – especially when heavily biased algorithms play into this 
  • How do you do this research without sounding like a boomer lol 

Conceptual question #3: What role does digital intimacy and care plan in faith exploration and faith-based exploitation? 

  • Faith-based work often involves serious vulnerabilities and also contexts that render people more needy and susceptible to harm (for a variety of reasons) 
  • The average person has many more touchpoints to reach far more people easily than they could 10 even 5 years ago 
  • Cult-like personas taken on by average people once they experience the power of an audience – what impact an audience has on power play and manipulation (and how readily available that opportunity is right now) 
  • Manipulation potential that comes with having a digital body that can user test what works all the time and start over/pivot 
  • Micro-faiths – what gets to emerge when you can find anyone who believes anything? 
    • What are the benefits of this? People like TheTransHijabi now have thousands of followers and trans Muslims have their own faith-determination and leadership. 
    • Micro Influencers can now replicate cult leader power grabs tho – QueerMuslimProject based in Delhi had 30k or so followers, really helped a lot of queer Muslims, but the founder began a power trip and started manipulating followers – soliciting nudes from underage boys, etc 
    • Many more ‘regular’ people who can be in this position now 
  • Power to evil pipeline! And how does this translate to overnight virality and celebrity culture 
  • My fear with this topic is calling out or getting in trouble with faith leaders who are micro influencers of religion… and this is ultimately why I think I will not take this approach to dig into 

Conceptual question #4: Is the self just a culmination of constructions, compartmentalizations, and remnants of/yearning for more cohesive archives? 

  • False memory, planted memory, constructed memory, compartmentalized memory, algorithmically generated memory, and the other ways that we are forming memories today that are different from even 10 years ago on identity construction. 
  • I’m still thinking about what my goal with this one would be. I don’t want to fear monger or have the ‘impact’ be ‘nothing is real’
  • I do want to highlight memory construction and marginalization here – I think even with the other questions. 
  • Those who are most easily manipulated are often hyper rich or hyper poor. 
  • The extremes get hit in different ways because they either have so much to lose or nothing to lose. 
  • Class commentary and how the question changes across lines of class feels necessary for all questions here – Identity construction and compartmentalization is fundamentally more important for these groups 

I am struggling with the technical questions I can connect these ideas to. What I want to explore further just as skills for myself are… 

  • Ethnographic research that translates to ‘technical’ research
  • Machine Learning for Sentiment Analysis 
  • Working with data and using it to tell stories 
  • Web development, AR, world building (Unity, Unreal Engine) 

Honestly, a big part of what I’m anxious about is taking these topics and turning them into something tangible that I create and not just theorize around/research. Beth has also graciously offered a brainstorming session, which we will do between Section 2 and 3 of class. I’m hoping to add a reflection to my next journal entry on what came out of that session. 

Here are some ideas that were shared with me by my group to revisit and dig into: