thesis conclusion

Existing platforms allow assemblage of affective and instrumental fragments for collective future-building but deny autonomy over the resulting para-archives. By prioritising agency over data formats, semantic connections, data ownership and the blurred boundaries between private and public, we can design for externalised selves that are more resilient and directly representative. Usability and community ethos are major wins for Are.na, and Pinterest benefits from sheer quantity of content, but excluding the financial imperative from these projects makes room for more radical freedoms. In this enquiry I’ve demonstrated the value of resistive fragment assemblages, well-documented on Tumblr and presented here through Pinterest and Are.na. I’ve discussed how they create collectivist counter-publics through para-archival curation, and how a decentralised, semantic model that could enable them further.