Tanya Notley

The materiality of globital memory: bringing the cloud to earth

The cloud is a metaphor that helps to obscure the material realities that rest beneath our digital memories. However, a number of scholars in memory studies have suggested that cultural memory has always had a material basis and some, though limited, scholarly attention has already considered the toxic by-products and unethical practices involved in mining minerals that are used in making digital memories. This article draws on earlier work on the materiality of cultural memory as well as Tsings (Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, 2005) concept of ‘friction’ in global commodity chains to help analyse our own empirical research in Australia and Malaysia that looks at the production of rare earth minerals, whose use in making digital communication technologies is not widely known. Our analysis concludes that that not all citizens are equally bearing the burden of the risks and damages caused by our growing desire and addiction for information and communication gadgets and digital memory. We argue that any conceptualization of digitized and globalized or ‘globital memory’ must resist metaphors, narratives and concepts that attempt to remove digital memory from its material consequences; to do this scholars must incorporate an understanding of memorys materialism into their research, rather than focusing predominantly or exclusively on its energetic or ‘virtual’ properties.

Cultivating (Digital) Capacities: A Role for Social Living Labs?

Abstract Digital divide, digital inclusion and digital participation: these and many other terms have been used to name, identify and address technology access and use as a perceived problem, need or opportunity. In this chapter we first reflect on what the development of these terms has achieved, and consider the specific implications of their uptake in the Australian context. We then present a concept of ‘digital capacities’. We argue that this concept can usefully shift the focus from individuals to communities, from fixed to dynamic needs and contexts and from personal deficits to shared strengths and opportunities. Moreover the concept puts forward an understanding of ‘the digital’ as sociotechnical relations, thus challenging the idea present in much popular and policy discourse that ‘the social’ and ‘the digital’ are separate realms. In the final section of the chapter we explore the ways social living labs might operationalize and cultivate capacities to thrive in a digital age.