Blogs: Personal or Communal?

Thoughts in relation to Jose van Dijck reading:
In the reading, Jose agrees with Maurice Halbwachs, that "personal memory can only exist in relation to collective memory". Nonetheless, she insists on the primacy of the personal: "The sum of individual memories never equals collectivity". For Dijck, memories might be technologically mediated, but are still personal to individuals. For instance, the Holocoust as mentioned by her was made known to the public sphere by accumulating individual memories and artefacts and merge them together as a collective. In the modern world, projections of such a historical event through technology such as films and audio visual documentaries shown us how memory can be so personal and yet so widely shared. The author mentioned that
"media and memory transform each other" and she has coined the phrase "mediated memories" to define the notion.

Blogs have been a social phenomenon as a space for people to express themselves and to keep a web diary of their lives, replacing the traditional means of diary keeping. But have we ever wondered why blogs are so widely popular? And to what extent it is personal when people you might not even know have access to your ramblings online? Bloggers demostrates privacy and exerts their personal aura through blogs and at the same time allows openness for others to judge and see their thoughts. I would say that most famous bloggers use their own personal charisma such as humour or wit to their advantage and apply them into advertorials to garner revenues. Thus, it meshes both individualism and collectivism. Besides, the availability of the archive serves as a tool for us to reminisense and look up previous happenings.

In the reading, the author mentioned that memory could be transform and that memory is as malleable as the technologies that contribute to the creation of memory objects. Selective memory is another topic that intrigues me. For example, it is usually absolute for us to try to eradicate or alter memories that are hurtful to us. And with the emergence of technology, getting rid of unwanted experiences could be represented through the process of deleting files or videos. Besides that, we can always alter our photographs by editing the photos with the pool of photo editing software out there in the market. As we rely so heavily on computers to store our files of photographic, e-mails, videos, music and others, deleting them is just a click away. Moreover, blog entries could be deleted whenever the author feel like it and that shows us that the author has the control over what contents and to what degree of exposure they want to display on their pages to their readers. Again, enhancing Jose van Dijck's point of the inevitable correlation of personal and collective memories. Memories cold be transformed to suit our own individual needs and desires. However, is it that easy to erase painful memories and does technology helps humans to achieve that?