Screwed: Anxiety and the Digital Ends of Anticipation

Abstract

This essay discusses anxiety as the paradigmatic malady of the present and its correlation with the rise of always-on computing. Discussing anxiety as “an expectation emotion,” the essay notes the ways in which always-on computing has outsourced futurity to opaque computational processes. This essay asserts that the latter fuels the former. However, all is not lost. Through the analyses of three online texts—an artist’s clock, a meme, and a YouTube video—the essay argues for a view of this situation that recognizes the pleasurable and resolutely social dimensions of anxiety. Discussion of these texts elucidates the dynamics of anxiety in always-on computing and challenges the assumption of anxiety as an individual problem.