Digital images are both momentary and seemingly eternal

Evidence

But we also know that the internet appears as completely enduring. We live in a time in which the past seems as if it will never vanish, in which childhood will never go away, in which mistakes refuse to fade, in which years gone will continue to haunt one throughout the rest of their life. This “enduring ephemeral” temporality of the internet, to use a term from media theorist Wendy Chun, means that digital images are both momentary and seemingly eternal, a temporality that emerges from the constant repetition of software and hardware, making endless copies that never seem to fully disappear. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 75

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Chun’s ‘enduring ephemeral’ as the defining temporality of digital images.
• XREF: connects to: Synthetic textures can evoke a timeless Now rather than signifying the Future — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 351