For digital natives, living life without technology seems
pretty impossible. Embarrassingly, there are times where I find myself on my
computer, iPhone and iPad simultaneously. My friends and I are constantly
checking Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, always talking about what others are
posting. What’s important for us to realize, especially as teenagers in this
social-media obsessed culture, is that once we post/send/tweet/update something
online…it is permanent and out there forever. Future employers will be able to
see the photos we post, the things we “like” on Facebook, and the stuff we
tweet. Sure, there are ways to make accounts private, but there are loopholes
and there is nothing that you post on the internet that is truly 100% private. With the invention of sites like Facebook and
Twitter, there has been an emergence of social media etiquette. One must always
think before they post a comment or a photo, they must be aware that even while
in the moment a certain comment could seem trivial, in reality it is something
they are making public forever. We are no longer the authors of our papers, or
our text messages, but we have authorship over all social media sites we choose
to participate in. In the context of Foucault’s essay, “What is an Author”,
does this mean that every time we decide to Instagram our lunch, or comment on
a friend’s Facebook status, we are acting as “authors”? I don’t believe that
you can call a photo on Instagram or a Tumblr post a work of art with you as an
author, but in a way you are creating something, and presenting it to the world
much like an author would. It’ll be interesting to see how my generation, who
has been using Facebook since middle school, will end up using Facebook in the
future. Will we try and delete our old posts? There are definitely some
pictures of me during my awkward stage as a high school freshman that I don’t want
my Facebook friends to see anymore. Will we begin to defriend people and edit
old posts? I’m curious to see how Facebook and other social media sites alter culture
for us and change what it means to be an author.
I think that the question, "What is an Author?" is just as relevant now as it was when Foucault wrote, or even more so. With so many people "publishing" does authorship still exist, or have we moved onto a new principle, a new mode of existence for texts. We do seem to be authoring ourselves, as your post suggests. But with everyone authoring themselves and others, what does authorship mean any more? Does it still refer to elevated, valorized text? And if not, is it authored text or not? If all texts are authored, is it the same as having no authored text?
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