The internet has an enduring-ephemeral temporality where images are both fleeting and 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

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Introduces Wendy Chun’s ‘enduring ephemeral’ concept, useful for explaining why influencer content persists as archived commodity.

Related

• Digital images are both momentary and seemingly eternal (similarity 0.95)