Davide Sisto - Remember Me

1 Cover

2 Dedication Dedication For Michele Barbotto, in memory of the Potentissima, of Bar Verde and everything that death has left here

3 Title Page Remember Me Memory and Forgetting in the Digital Age Davide Sisto Translated by Alice Kilgarriff polity

4 Copyright Page Copyright Page Originally published in Italian as Ricordati di me: La rivoluzione digitale tra memoria e oblio © 2020 Bollati Boringhieri editore, Torino This English edition © Polity Press, 2021 The translation of this work has been funded by SEPS Segretariato Europeo per le Pubblicazioni Scientifiche Via Val d’Aposa 7 – 40123 Bologna – Italy seps@seps.it – www.seps.it Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 101 Station Landing Suite 300 Medford, MA 02155, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4503-2 (hardback) ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4504-9 (paperback) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

5 Acknowledgements Acknowledgements Writing a book on memory and memories has, for me, been a titanic endeavour. I do not have an easy relationship with ‘looking back’, as it always leaves me with a melancholy sense of loss. This forces upon me the need always to look ahead and to recognize the importance of dying and being forgotten. However, as incoherence tends to win out over coherence, looking back is the central issue of this book which, having been written in order to be published and read, reveals the author’s implicit desire to leave his mark. I would like, first and foremost, to offer my most heartfelt thanks to Roberto Gilodi, Michele Luzzatto, Flavia Abbinante, Elena Cassarotto and the publishing house Bollati Boringhieri for having given me the opportunity to write this book. I would also like to thank all of those with whom I share, each and every day, the objective of bringing the discourse on death back into the public space in order to limit the negative effects of its social and cultural repression: Marina Sozzi and the blog Si può dire morte ; Ines Testoni and the Masters in Death Studies and the End of Life at the University of Padua; Ana Cristina Vargas, Gisella Gramaglia and Fondazione Ariodante Fabretti in Turin; Maria Angela Gelati and Il Rumore del Lutto in Parma; Massimiliano Cruciani and Zero K in Carpi; Laura Campanello and the Death Cafè in Merate; Alice Spiga and the SO.CREM. in Bologna. I would also like to thank everyone who has shown interest and enthusiasm for Online Afterlives , giving me the possibility of discussing the book’s themes throughout Italy. I will cherish the memories of moving experiences I have had from North to South over the last year and a half. I am truly grateful to those splendid individuals whom I have had the opportunity to meet from time to time. I would also like to thank Ade Zeno, friend and companion in never-ending thanatological adventures; Valentino Farina, in memory of past times; and Dedalo Bosio, the Splunge cited in this book. Finally, I would like to thank Lorenza Castella, because she doesn’t read my books and therefore will never know she has been thanked. The final and most important mentions go to Nello and Silvana, and to my irreplaceable Roberta, so involved in this book (poor her!) that she dreamed about it at night. May many pasticcini al pistacchio atone for my sins.

6 Introduction. Social Networks and Looking Back The Past is Just a Story We Tell Our Followers Facebook and Looking Back: #10YearChallenge, On This Day, Memories Notes

7 1 From Social Networks to Digital Archives The Twenty Days of Turin : Facebook in 1977 Naked in front of the Computer: Social Networks in the 1990s The World Doubled: Reincarnation or the Cocaine of the Future? Blogs, Forums, Mailing Lists: A New Life in 56K The Era of Shared Passions: An Epidemic of Digital Memories Digital Memory as Crazed Mayonnaise: The Past is Emancipated, Identities Multiply Notes

8 2 Collective Cultural Autobiographies and Encyclopedias of the Dead 2.0 Experiments in Collective Cultural Autobiography Copy and Paste: Writing About Oneself is Like Summing Up the History of the Universe Cancer Bloggers: My Body is My Message Stories of Cancer Bloggers on YouTube and Facebook Facebook: Encyclopedia of the Dead 2.0? Autobiographical Memory: Inventing the Past Disinterred Bodies: Social Networks and Data Flows as Archives Notes

9 3 Total Recall, Digital Immortality, Retromania Becoming the Database of Ourselves: Lifelogging and Video-Camera Memory The Memobile : From Total Recall to Digital Immortality The Memory Remains : The Life of Memories Post-Mortem Mind-Uploading as a Declaration of Independence by Memory Insomnia Inside a Garbage Heap: Funes, or of a Life that Never Forgets Creating Space in Memory: Forgetting and Sleep as Forms of Resistance The Internet as a Melancholy Container of Regret: Hollie Gazzard, The Last Message Received, Wartherapy Retromania and Sad Passions: The End of Nostalgia and the Loss of the Future San Junipero Exists and Lives in Facebook Notes

10 Conclusion. Digital Inheritance and a Return to Oblivion Digital Inheritance: What to Do With Our Own Memories? The Value of Oblivion and the Joy of Being Forgotten Notes

11 Bibliography

12 Index

13 End User License Agreement

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2 Table of Contents

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