Explaining The Essence Of Lists With A List (Yeah How's That For Some Inception)

"Bare lists of words are found suggestive to an imaginative and excited mind" — Ralph Waldo Emerson.

1. Lists have the very unique ability to be able to group and classify content that otherwise would not be grouped together.

As Foucault notes “What is impossible is not the propinquity of the things listed, but the very site on which their propinquity would be possible” (1994).

2. How a list functions is dependent on its relationship to various techniques of inscription and/or representation, historical constellations of power/knowledge, and media-technical conditions of possibility.

Context is key when it comes to a list. They need to know how they should function.

3. According to Fuller (2008), this ability articulates what Deleuze calls an 'aesthetics of multiplicity'.

This is the ability for a list to have each part read separately coupled with the plain evidence of the content being linked by some kind of boarder or pattern. In turn, this allows for the invention of the readers own unique meaning.

4. Because of this ability, lists are indeed at network because they draw things together.

Take this list for example. I'm bringing together a range of sources that otherwise wouldn't be together to formulate a a network of ideas on a digital platform so that you can understand a theory. Pretty incredible huh?

5. Foucault explores this further, "What transgresses the boundaries of all imagination, of all possible thought, is simply that alphabetical series (a, b, c, d) which links each of those categories to all the others".

Foucault argues that somethings would never meet unless they were read or transcribed in a list. He questions if we would be aware of juxtapositions and that if lists did not exist would we have the space or the platform to create these juxtapositions? Take this list of humorous GIFs and serious copy, where else would I be afforded the opportunity to do this?

6. According to Eco (2009), lists have an amazing way of "capturing the world".

This is because a list has the ability to provide a certain amount of information whilst at the same time they only explain so much, "leaving the reader to imagine the rest”. Lists also have the unique ability to help us consume large amounts of information by dividing the information up into digestible chunks and at the same creates patterns that help us remember this information.

7. Eco suggests that lists strive to make infinity comprehensible.

He questions how one attempts to grasp the incomprehensible. He concludes that it is through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries that we attempt to define what we don't know.

8. Lists bring together information just by the sheer fact that the information is placed within a list.

Once the information is placed within a list the content is automatically connected. The information becomes it's own article in which it's won meaning is formed rather than taking the meaning from a range of different sources.

9. To understand these theories we must first look at how the aesthetics of a list enables it to create meaning.

BuzzFeed uses the vertical list structure, which has a clear-cut beginning and a precise end. This brings greater visibility to categories and the information within them.

10. The list functions variously as a communicative device, a cultural formation, a technique of administration, a storage or archival device, a poetic form, and a mediator. It can be past, present, or future-oriented – retroactive, administrative, or prescriptive.

11. The fact that this list is not numbered yet attempts to encapsulate a whole topic sees tension arise between the competing “everything included” and “etcetera”.

The list has a definitive nature to it. It suggests that if the information is not on the list it is not relevant. Yet at the same time it looks open ended suggesting that more information is inferred or could be added. This ties back into the second point about the 'aesthetics of multiplicity' (whilst showcasing the 'aesthetics of multiplicity'). MIND BLOWN.

12. The list now dominates how we consume our information online. As Young (2013) notes, "there has been a massive proliferation of this form – particularly online".

The aesthetic of a list lends itself to the digital. It seems almost tailor-made for digital devices like the smartphone as you can scroll through and acquire information and revert back to previous points for context and to formulate more meaning.

13. The combination of succinct text, GIFs and images allows the list to break free from the finite dimensions of the literary list and more towards the open and active representations of ‘etcetera’ as the visual stimuli provides the extra information.

With the BuzzFeed list you can incorporate images and GIFs that give added meaning to the bare list of words and infer far more than what is just plainly said. As Young notes "The poetics of “everything included” vs. “etcetera” encapsulates all of the ambivalence and complexity of the list as a form that Fuller sees as so generative in digital worlds."

14. The list facilitates a certain type of information dissemination that makes it popular within digital networks.

It is sharable, quick to read and easy to digest, making it perfect for creating a digital network. In an age where there is a perceived 'information overload', lists coupled with technology has made sharing and consuming information so easy. Not to mention short attention spans making lists a favourable medium.

15. However, Blair points out that we’ve been complaining there is “too much to know” since at least the early modern period, more probably since antiquity.

16. John Durham Peters, too, is fond of this disseminative capacity of lists.

He describes their use as both a “battle against [his] own finitude” and an always already futile attempt to “catch the cosmos" (2011). Yet again lists are showing that they have 'aesthetics of multiplicity'. I imagine this is how you catch the cosmos...

17. Lists are not only networks of information themselves but they can also facilitate networks.

Young notes, "the list here is an integral component of this network; it is an example of a residue or trace of relationships that is essential to the network archaeological project of excavating a non-media-centric history of connection."

18. Lists prescribe and determine networks of action.

As Young notes, "the list processes the past in the present so as to affect the future".

19. Both producers and consumers utilise the list. In the case of the producer it is to quickly communicate information whereas for the consumer it is more to help navigate this perceived information overload.

You love a list don't you. I've seen you looking at all those lists...ohhhh so easy to consume.

20. The list is key to understanding many things. It has much to tell us about the essence of writing, the capacity of the human imagination, and even those spaces which go beyond what we can comprehend.