'Surf Life, ou l’excès à l’ère du numérique' [Surf Life: Excess in the Age of Information]

Abstract

« Surf Life » is term that attempts to describe some of the characteristics and consequences of what I suggest is a new ecology of remembering and forgetting. The forms it takes, and the consciousness it seems to give rise to, cannot be separated from the ways in which we come to live in, and with, time and place as they are conditioned by the new digital technologies that suffuse everyday life. In relation to the everyday habits of contemporary western life, in particular, this « surf life » might be thought of as a kind of « surfacing » – a disengagement from the consequences of living through an excess of present moments that are quickly rendered obsolete by the arrival of new fascinations.