(Im)possible History?

Digital Ecology as an Approach to Transmit Memory and Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Classics constantly endeavour to investigate the links a society builds with its history, memory and cultural heritage. With the development of digital technologies, new research methods, knowledge, and a plethora of data have emerged so as to create an environment with its own mythology and rhetoric, where there is no place for loss. In this essay, the authors question the (im)possibility of writing history in such a digital environment where the credo of dematerialisation and unlimited preservation of data has become the rule. In response, the authors posit the digital environment as not distinct nor distanced from the natural environment, whose resources are limited. Therefore, in order to meet academic as well as public needs, we pledge an ecological approach to a sustainable, reasonable and ethical world to preserve memory and cultural, and natural heritage.