Liminoid media: On the enduring significance of USB portable flash drives

This article draws on the findings of in-depth interviews with consumers of portable storage devices in Melbourne, Australia, to explore the enduring significance of Universal Serial Bus (USB) portable flash drives. In the article, we develop the concept of ‘liminoid media’ as a way of coming to terms with continued use, and complications of use. Our understanding of this term is inspired by the seminal anthropological writings of Victor Turner ( pace Arnold van Gennep), more recent scholarship applying liminality to media studies and debates within media theory concerning the status of old and new media (where it has been argued, among other things, that media are always in transition rather than part of a strict old–new binary). Against this backdrop, we employ ‘liminoid media’ as a way of making critical sense of the ‘betwixt and between’ status of USB portable flash drives – their ongoing ‘suspendedness’ – and the complicated tensions that characterise participant use of these devices. For our participants, USBs are understood as fulfilling a compromise between emergent practices of cloud computing and more established forms of centralised data storage; they are understood as temporary data storage devices that are often used in semi-permanent ways to protect against data loss; they are seen as ephemeral devices that are rarely disposed of. USBs are also ‘ritualised’ insofar as they frequently become intimate, aestheticised everyday objects; yet, accompanying this ritualised ‘suspendedness’ are certain forms of risk and danger – of obsolescence, of data loss, of device failure, and so on. USBs, in short, occupy an essential if complicated position in people’s contemporary data storage practices. Examining USBs, and the practices of use that surround them, we argue, provides insight into current (and always ongoing) changes in the media environment, and demonstrates the extent to which liminoid media are contemporary in use.