Trash Versionality for Post-Digital Culture

Abstract

This article attempts an overview of phenomena, which exemplify informational and conceptual instances (or ‘versions’) characteristic of current ‘post-digital’ conditions. By counter-posing a variety of material, I aim to explore the role and position of different kinds of images (foremost social and visual) as they constitute post-digital relations. These are relations in which the primacy of computerized digital objects is moot. The versions presented in this text are the social, cultural and organizational confluences which find expression in differing data formats — originals and copies subject to fluctuating, moment-to-moment alteration. Together with the growth in communication and exchange, these versions imply a continual re-writing of the standards affecting social and network-based encounter. The processes renew shared conceptions and pictures, prompt self-reflection and pose the questions, “whose truth?” and, “whose value(s)?”