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Chapter 1 | Introduction: Cyberplaces of Memory
Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and individually, as
something that could be discerned by a better brain, the past would
not be so seductive: its demands would be balanced by those of the
future. Persons might then straddle the middle stretch of the seesaw
when considering this or that object. It might be fun. 1
What This Is All About?
The pervasive fascination with the presence of the past and the very elusiveness of the present
seems unending. At the dawn of the new millennium the world is in many respects very different
from the 20th century. Yet (and not only) in terms the of continuity of techno-cultural
developments it is nevertheless still deeply referenced and connected, ‗organically‘ bound to the
short 20th century. 2 What makes the past century so intensely short, and all the more intensely represenced,
3 is the all-around ‗infestation‘ of the everyday by the mediated presence of the seminal
and not so seminal historical episodes and events, spanning popular culture and politics. These
presences, however, are heavily assisted by the developments in the communications technologies
which enabled and facilitated a significant change in the ways the past is represented and made
sense of. Not unimportantly, the very understanding of time has been subdued to the rhythms of
mediated reality. 4
In other words, the 20th century—with its fascinating achievements in
technological, cultural, economic and social development on the one hand and the devastating
disasters of the two world wars, the Cold war and many socio-political perturbations on the
other—became one enormous historical, and yes, media event. Through ceaseless media
appropriations and representations, remediations, admittedly also an immensely fragmented one...
What the 20th century yields to a retrospective gaze is a multitude of variegated, multi-faceted and
fragmented remnants of the past. Through their apprehension by the media these remnants
1 Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things, New York, Vintage International, 1989, 1.
2 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short 20th Century, 1914—1991, London, Michael Joseph, 1994.
3 Vivian Sobchak, ―Afterword: Media Archaeology and Re-Presencing the Past,‖ in Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka
(eds.), Media Archaeology, Approaches, Applications and Implications, Berkeley, Los Angeles London, California
University Press, 2011, 323–334.
4 Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, Space, Time and Everyday Life, Continuum, London New York, 2004, 47.
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