Digital memories have often been interpreted – both pejoratively and positively – as free-floating and placeless. On the one hand, digital technology is dismissed for creating a placeless sameness and meaninglessness: memories cut loose from the distinctive places in which they were formed and which gave them meaning. On the other hand, it is celebrated for creating a progressive placelessness in which memories may develop unencumbered by the restrictions, antagonisms and exclusivity of boundaries, borders and rootedness. Yet, an increasingly everted and pervasive 21st century Internet – and the rise of mobile and locative technologies – challenge the notion that place is significant to digital memory only in its absence. Digital memories are also personal and local memories, which are both marked by the contours of existing place politics and social geographies, and capable of reshaping these contours into new, heterogeneous and dynamic place-making. This is cyberplace: malleable, shifting, often disorientating; but also textured, uneven and located.

数字记忆经常被解读为——无论是贬义的还是积极的——自由浮动和无位置的。一方面，数字技术因为创造了一种无处的相同和无意义而被驳回：记忆从它们形成并赋予它们意义的独特地方中分离出来。另一方面，它以创造一种渐进的无场所性而闻名，在这种无场所性中，记忆可以不受边界、边界和根源的限制、对抗和排他性的阻碍。然而，21 世纪互联网日益外向化和普及——以及移动和定位技术的兴起——挑战了“地方只有在数字记忆缺失时才对数字记忆有意义”的观念。数字记忆也是个人和本地的记忆，它们都以现有地方政治和社会地理学的轮廓为标志，并且能够将这些轮廓重塑为新的、异质的和动态的地方创造。这就是网络空间：可塑性强、变化多端、经常迷失方向；但也有纹理，不均匀和定位。