digital memories – an introduction to the blog

The cultural landscape that provides the nodes around which we form our identities and communities is undergoing a process of re-territorialization within digital media. As we fly over the pixilated landscape in Second Life, we realize the human capacity for imagined world-making and how new media are being”settled” by people who carry their identities, cultures, their pasts and memories, into new virtual worlds.
This blog explores how virtual worlds, new media and technolgies, structure our cultural and personal memories in new ways. How do we read cultural memories that are formed in a digital world wherein national and global paradigms conflate? How do avatars commemorate? What is the difference between museum exhibits of the Holocaust in actual and virtual life? What happens to our memories and our cultural artifact when they are stored and communicated in digital formats – and what happens to us? These are some of the issues that will be discussed here on this blog.