Mission

    PublicMemory.com was created with the belief in the power of collective memory, or the idea that society's most closely held beliefs and opinions come from the media that surround us every day. In addition to explicitly shaping public opinion, when the media publishes or highlights certain stories over others, it shapes the very way people view reality.

    For these reasons, the Internet is increasingly becoming the dominant new medium. There exists within this new information paradigm the potential for the development of extensive "knowledge networks". Because so many people have access to the same information, it is suddenly possible to draw valuable knowledge from vast numbers of resources. At the same time, however, the sheer volume and varying quality of this data makes it necessary for experts to contextualize and interpret information from the web for it to have meaning. As this new search paradigm evolves, it will become increasingly important to have access to what we call "decentralized search".