Remembering in the metaverse

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Electronic memory, encompassing computing hardware and software that enhances our biological memories, embodies the vision of the MEMEX by Vannevar Bush. In an era of ubiquitous computing, our digital shadows—representations of our lives—extend beyond individual documents to encompass continuous activities, interconnected with others' digital shadows through social data and software. This thesis presents a concept for a future metaverse archive, an electronic memory infrastructure aimed at preserving, evaluating, and disseminating the information we gather throughout our lives. The first case study introduces the Permanent Visual Archive (PEVIAR) as a solution to digital preservation, addressing the challenges of long-term information retention despite the abundance of electronic storage. PEVIAR provides a stable, accessible, and authentic form of electronic memory, albeit static. The second case study evaluates social data, using email communications from 151 Enron employees to reconstruct and analyze their social network. It demonstrates how physical simulations can visualize complex networks while preventing information overload, serving as a basis for further analysis with established graph metrics. The third study explores context-aware display technologies, particularly mixed reality, as essential for capturing and disseminating our digital corpora. It emphasizes the importance of spatial context in recalling informat