UNIVERSITY OF NOVA GORICA GRADUATE SCHOOL ...

This research proposes to thematise the internet as another in a long line of technological
innovations in the field of communications technologies. In historical perspective it is clear that
virtually all technological innovations (in media technologies in particular) provoked at first much
doubt and fear on the one hand, and fiery advocacy on the other. Another issue with introduction
and establishment of new technologies is that despite the fact that a new technology in hindsight
may seem to have caused a radical break, it is more often the case that new technologies are a
result of innovative evolution. 110 Yet, the internet and cyberspace, according to N. Katherine
Hayles, should not be seen as an ―irresistible force of technological determinism,‖ but rather as a
function of ―historically specific negotiations.‖ 111 Still, profound changes have occurred in the
ways the past is recorded (or better how the present is recorded for the future), archived,
preserved, forgotten, narrated. Moreover, media
significantly influence on the way, intensity, structure, rhythm and velocity of
interactions between people and also on quality and quantity of transmitted
messages. They not only influence how we connect with other people, how we
establish contact and exchange messages, but also on how we see other people, the
world around us, how we conceive of ourselves, how we present ourselves to others,
and how we construct our identity. 112
The online/offline distinction is further invalidated when focusing on online mediatisations of the
Yugoslav past. This study implies a strong connection between ‗real‘ societies and individuals and
online spaces of externalisation of (changes in interpreting) memory and history and counters the
dualistic understanding of real and cyberspace. 113
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The former Yugoslavs (or today‘s post-
Yugoslavs) have been facing profound changes over the period of transformation, not least in
material externalisations of historical and memorial landscapes (renaming of streets, demolition of
monuments, border disputes, etc.). The dissolution and the war made many refugees and emigrants
and left even more without a homeland. These people lost a viral connection to their pasts to
nationalising states and political discourses, 114
which promoted national exclusivism and
concomitantly advocated an annihilation of the socialist past, or rather of all the past (or history)
110 A close investigation reveals that before one technology becomes dominant, several similar technologies, media,
formats exist simultaneously. This was the case with cinema (zoetrope, praxinoscope, phenakistoscope, etc.), sound
recording devices (on Edison‘s phonograph see Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New. Media, History and the Data of
Culture, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2009) and not least with the latest media format battles (and rapid successions), e.g.
VHS, Beta, DVD, Blueray.
111 N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Post-Human: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics,
Chicago, Chicago UP, 1999, 20.
112 Maruša Pušnik, ―Telefonska razmerja: o razvoju telefona in premenah druţbenih interakcij,‖ in Tanja Oblak and
Breda Luthar (eds.), Mobilni telefon in transformacija vsakdana, Ljubljana, FDV, 2010, 31–52.
113 Mark Nunes, Cyberspaces of everyday life, Minneapolis, London, University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
114 Roger Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1996.