How does organizational memory function in the context of digital computing? Organizational memory studies are rooted in information systems approaches that emphasize data storage and retrieval. For some time, however, such technical approaches have become replaced by studies of the human processes involved in remembering, and in social influences affecting the reframing of memories in light of collective influences. However, this analytical emphasis on human (individual and social) aspects stands in contrast with the growth of the use of information technology in organizations. Computers and networked devices not only send, receive, process and store massive amounts of communication, they also automatically generate data through sensors, cameras and algorithms. Moreover, 21st century media are focussed on feeding information back to the user (or organizational agent) to influence their choices, decisions and behaviour in real time. In this chapter we seek to contemplate how organizational memory works in such contemporary technical contexts. Drawing specifically on the media theorists Bernard Stiegler and Mark Hansen we contrast analogue and mechanical forms of memory from digital, computing based ones.

In Chapter 10, we begin by summarising the key areas of focus and concepts addressed within this book, exploring our analytic focus on juxtapositions between expectations and reality, and our conceptual focus on social flesh and feelings as a way that institutions are internalised. We then turn to consider how the participants experienced the process of being involved in the qualitative longitudinal study. Specifically, we look at whether or not participants shared their experiences of being interviewed with their partner, and what that meant for the couple relationship. We also look at what the participants felt they had gained from being involved in the study, which emphasised participation as a way to remember things that might be forgotten, and a way to reflect on the reality of new parenthood. The chapter concludes by considering what the study can tell us about future research on family diversity.

Remembering is also the theme of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) but of a different kind than Schelling’s. It is not of a cosmic event; nor does it yield a theogony. The issue for Hegel is rather the actualization of the historical human individual and of humanity accordingly, and the remembering is of how being rational affects an individual’s relation to nature. At origin this relation is worked out unconsciously. It is visibly reflected, however, in the sense of self-identity into which an individual is historically born, just as one is born into a family. To retrieve the source of the identity, thus to make it deliberately one’s own – by the same token to make of nature a work of intelligence – is the factor that motivates experience. Chapter 5 contrasts Schelling’s and Hegel’s respective ideas of history. It then proceeds with a detailed examination of the Phenomenology up to the section on Religion. It argues that, while in some ways a work of conceptual fiction, the Phenomenology must nonetheless have historical anchoring and logical significance. It also underscores the debt Hegel owes to Fichte that makes him quite different from Schelling.

The first part of the introduction explores how historians and literary scholars have approached early modern memory and sketches the trajectory of recent work on the memory of the English and European Reformations. It then examines the ways in which the religious revolution transformed the memorial culture it inherited from the medieval past and the manner in which it engendered new strategies of remembering and forgetting, commemoration and amnesia. The second section explains the architecture and structure of the volume, which is divided into four parts (1) Events and Temporalities; (2) Objects and Places (3) Lives and Afterlives; (4) Bodies and Rituals. It probes the temporal; spatial and material; biographical; and ceremonial and corporeal dimensions of the memory of the English Reformation, establishing a series of conceptual frameworks for the essays that follow. The Reformation is reconceptualised less as a unitary moment of rupture than as ongoing struggle to reconfigure the nation’s ecclesiastical and cultural heritage and to accommodate the unruly legacy of the past. A prolonged development involving impulses towards both historical preservation and oblivion, it continues to be refought in memory and the imagination.

In this chapter Jolyon Mitchell analyses how audiences, journalists and producers interact with media representations of violence. More precisely he examines the practices of revealing, representing, redacting, remembering, and responding to mediated images of violence, using a wide range of examples from different media. While recognizing the power of vivid journalistic written and verbal descriptions of violence, through this essay Mitchell primarily considers visual representations over the last two centuries, starting from the 1810s, in the decade before the first photograph (c.1826), to the present day, concentrating upon non-cinematic examples, such as photographic portrayals of non-fictional violence. Other practices such as hiding, selecting, overlooking, forgetting and recollecting are juxtaposed with these core practices of revealing, representing, redacting, remembering and responding. Mitchell argues that these related practices contribute to the way violence manifests itself around the circuit of communication, which begins with acts of creation and production of images of violence, and which is then followed by their dissemination, reception and recycling. Reflecting further on this circuit of communication and these related practices helps answer questions such as: Why do certain images of violence receive more attention than others? Why are some media representations of violence remembered and others easily forgotten?