journal of digital research & publishing - The Sydney eScholarship ...

1 P M J O U R N A L O F D I G I T A L R ESEARCH & P UBLISHING
By combining Leibniz’s theory of the Fold as a representation of the cohesive relationships
that exist between all aspects of material culture in the world, with the physical phenomena
of a gravitation plane, the copies that exist in digital culture can be viewed as a holistic
representation of the actual world. The copies that exist in the digital culture are removed
and pulled out of context, but this serves the purpose to encourage an understanding of
the world from the point of view of the self. The copies are also not just representations of
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been copied. Since the copies in the digital world are copies of a universally cohesive actual
world, as described by Leibniz, then the copies themselves are cohesive and universal. To
return to an earlier example, when looking at an image, or information, about a pond on
the internet, one does not just see the all the information and images about that pond that
is online. They also see all the information about any pond that is online. Contained in
the information about any pond online is the information about every pond that exists in
actuality. Because the ‘pond­bend’ in the plane of the digital world, is actually caused by
the pond­fold in the actual world. The pond­fold contains all the information of every pond
that has ever existed. In this philosophy the online digital culture presents to its reader a
holistic and complete view of the actual world. More than this, digital culture also offers to
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their own self since ‘[c]ultures exist side by side, [and] partly overlap’ (Deuze 2006, p. 72).
The implication for this point of view means that the world represented on the internet
is complete. Where it has previously been asserted that the information is not whole or
that the internet is not democratised in its presentation is false as demonstrated by the
cohesive connectedness that exists on the page of the real world and on the plane of the
virtual world that imitates.
As a result of the cohesive nature of the internet it is now recognisable that the information
contained therein is of equal value to the user. If too much time is spent on ‘technological
precision’ we will ‘remain unconnected or unaware of the past’s broader role and function
in society, we will always be chasing phantom unicorns of unchanging essence, rather
than trying to understand and encourage the creativity of collective memory in all of it’s
evolving forms’ (Silberman 2008, p. 90). Thus a researcher is free to accept the subjectivity
of digital culture, in terms of the shifted focus of information from its own context to that
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