Remember Me: Memory and Forgetting in the Digital Age

Abstract

Memory and Forgetting in the Digital Age is a descriptive subtitle of the book, Remember Me by the Italian theoretical philosopher Davide Sisto. The book’s central aim is to provide a philosophical argument on the consequences of digital networks such as social media and the internet in the way we remember and forget. Sisto does not subscribe to the well-known conception of memory and forgetting as opposites. He considers memory and forgetting to be the same thing; they have the same properties and are indistinguishable This is because remembering is forgetting, and forgetting is remembering. Memory does not pose the assumption that the past can be recalled totally but tries to fictionalise the past. The past begins to fade and deviate, and this deviation requires the act of forgetting. However, the proliferation of technologies and the internet has changed how we conceptualise forgetting and memory. The internet has provided the past with the opportunity to emancipate itself from the present and autonomously own itself and set its own trajectory. The past no longer sits in a space to be forgotten but now has the power to influence and shape the present.