Customer Reviews

Mediated Memories in the Digital Age (Cultural Memory in the Present)

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José van Dijck raises interesting questions in this book: How are digital artifacts different from physical ones? What does the advent of zero-cost memorabilia mean for how we construct our identities? How will this technological transition affect our culture and our sense of history?

These are good questions to reflect on, but this book gives us few answers. There are some enjoyable (and potentially illuminating) stories in here; my favorite is of the radio station in The Netherlands plays "the two thousand most popular songs of all times" (the subject of Ch. 4). Unfortunately, these stories are interspersed with unparseable sentences such as "In conjunction to the technological script, we hence need to look at how social practices and cultural forms transpire through the concrete manifestations of diary writings and lifelogs" (p.67) and "The pair brain/mind is hierarchically off set from the pairs technology/materiality and cultural practices/forms; the latter two are mere conceptual aids in the neurobiological theory of movies-in-the-brain" (p. 125).

Clearly, van Dijck has done her homework. But can any amount of social theory shed light on such broad questions? After reading this book, I don't feel like I've gained any new insight beyond the traditional mantra of the humanities: It's complicated.