The Technology of Collective Memory and the Normativity of Truth

Abstract

Neither our evolutionary past, nor our pre-literate culture, has prepared humanity for the use of technology to provide records of the past, records which in many contexts become normative for memory. The demand that memory be true, rather than useful or pleasurable, has changed our social and psychological self-understanding. The current vogue for lifelogging, and the rapid proliferation of digital memory-supporting technologies, may accelerate this change, and create dilemmas for policymakers, designers and social thinkers.