Memory and the Digital Era

Abstract

Digital has expanded the possibilities of memory and its technologies to a plan that raises some questions and a fi rst refl ection on its essential paradox. In short, the uncertainty that we propose to discuss in this paper is related to this contradiction that arises with regard to a mnemotechnic that guarantees both the expansion of memory and its closure or its dysfunctions. A paradox between the enlarged archive and the impossibility of memory. The memory / oblivion duality returns in a more complex technological context, with radical implications for the perception of contemporary politics (false memories, echo chambers), in the media (post-truth, alternative facts) economics (clickbait ideology, dememoriation) or in the erasure of the history itself (loss of web archives). The vertiginous memory that digital brings us is thus also a kind of non-memory.