The dynamics of zero: on digital memories of Mars and the human foetus in the globital memory field Cover Image

La dynamique du zéro: la mémoire numérique de Mars et le foetus humain dans le domaine de la mémoire globitale
The dynamics of zero: on digital memories of Mars and the human foetus in the globital memory field

Author(s): Anna Reading
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: ESSACHESS
Keywords: digital memory; globital memory field; epistemology of memory; new media technologies; medical imaging; Mars

Summary/Abstract: The dynamics of digitisation and globalisation are synergetically and dialectically changing the ways in which human beings individually and collectively capture, document, share and preserve memories of the past. This paper develops further the concept of the “globital memory field” with a discursive overview of the development of “digital memory” and the significance of zero in the meaning and practice of digital memory. The paper then explains the key elements of this epistemology, with an emphasis on the significance of zero or nothing in relation to two contrasting examples of the medical imaging of the human foetus to the capturing and sending back to Earth by NASA’s Curiosity robot images from the surface of Mars.

  • Issue Year: V/2012
  • Issue No: 02
  • Page Range: 21-44
  • Page Count: 23
  • Language: English