S03 Memory and Updating

"Everything happens all at once. But digital media are not just agents of postmodernism in such accounts, they are equally its expressions: 'What could not be mapped cognitively in the world of modernism now slowly brightens into the very circuits of the new transnational cybernetic' (701. This is particularly bleak view that underscores the present importance of questions like the ones framed here. Is the history of media--or indeed, the history of anything--possible amid the synchronous postmodern glare?" Gitelman 129

Is it possible to maintain track of history in a medium such as the internet when this medium is know for its temporality? While the internet has a vast amount of space, we continue to update it at an alarming rate. Spotted At Brown got about 3 pages of posts concerning BCA tickets the morning they were sold. This is from a school of 6,000 undergraduates. Now imagine how much information is actually making its way into the internet.

This was a topic that was very present in my mind at the beginning of the year. Is hypertext permanent or not? With Patchwork Girl I questioned whether not having something mapped out clearly in front of me allowed me to locate it. With no sense of its location, do we know if it exists? If history is being placed into the internet and constantly being updated, will we begin to lose what was initially there because we lose track of where it is? Like I had mentioned in that prior post, we are more likely to notice a room full of history books missing than if the information on the internet were to go missing. Perhaps I'm saying this because I am more of a user of the internet rather than a producer of what is to be found online. Perhaps if I produce it, I will be able to know if it goes missing.