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Insta-Worthy Memories and Filtered Truth

Posted on 12/01/25 in Computing/Internet, Memory

I’m looking forward very much to delivering my Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture, Insta-Worthy Memories and Filtered Truth, on Thursday 23rd Jan at the Senate House Building on Malet St. It’s one of the Institute’s London Lecture series for 2024-25, on the always-relevant topic of Remembering and Forgetting.

It’s great to be working in that space once more. I was involved in a fair bit of memory research about 15-20 years ago, under the heading of Memories for Life, which examined how new technologies were changing our relationship with the past. I produced a number of papers at the time, some of which have been quite well cited. In particular, one paper on the then-new practice of lifelogging, written with the lovely Mischa Tuffield (then a student, now probably a multi-millionaire somewhere with a dozen unicorn startups to his name), raised the likelihood that the practice would become social.

Well, since those days we’ve seen all sorts of innovations, to create what I have called digital modernity. The smartphone has become ubiquitous, and a greater variety of social media more integrated into ordinary life. Photography has become a social practice. Apps improve facial appearance in photos, leading to a boom in plastic surgery. Image-sharing on social media leads to the physical world being altered to become ‘Insta-worthy’. Physical reality is augmented by smartphones or headsets, virtual realities may be created, and in extreme cases, AI-created deepfakes are almost undetectable. As recording has been transformed, how will it affect the way we recall the past?