Past and Present in Digital Public History

Abstract

The author examines the relationship between past and present to reflecton the perception of time in the era of the digital revolution. The time of digital pres-entism is not linear but circular. The arrival point coincides with the starting point:from present to present. A loop faster and faster which changed the perception oftime for at least two generations of digital natives. The author uses Facebook as acase study to investigate the origin of the interreal (set of real and virtual) that re-structured the relationship between past and present. In the social network, theirlink is no longer entrusted to the scientific rigor of history but to the disintermediatedemotions of a ubiquitous memory which generates a wave of collective nostalgia.