Library Trends

Abstract:

This paper examines the way COVID-19-related rock art challenges popular assumptions about the information society and the digital age. Adopting a constructivist-based humanities approach, it explores the significance of rock art as an information practice that emerged in response to the pandemic. Specifically, this personal case study reflects on the way rock art encouraged people to practice "joyful attention" and "kind attention" during the 2020 spring restrictions in British Columbia. Analyzing the possible values associated with different rock designs, I suggest that this joy-oriented information practice presents an alternative narrative of the present time, one that is ultimately more positive in its representation of the world than the negative, technologically driven discourses that tend to dominate cultural narratives of information.