The affordances of different types of online space change how information is produced, circulated, and remembered across platforms. What happens when platforms enable the archival of information? What happens when they encourage collective experiences versus personal, inward-facing ones?

[cultural memory]

This protean online identity-building exemplifies how the internet has altered the mechanics of cultural memory in the past 30 years. Content can live forever on the internet, and at this point we have a mountain of it >30 years deep. But the massive amount of information makes it harder to glean any coherent grand narrative... See more

The cognitive effects of new media technology have been observed and debated throughout history. Socrates said that writing introduced “forgetfulness of the soul” and discouraged dialogue and internal reflection.

Writing also led to a more literal kind of forgetfulness. Ancient Greece was an oral culture that practiced advanced techniques for... See more