Fragments of an Infinite Memory: My Life with the Internet

by Maël Renouard, Peter Behrman de Sinéty (Translator)

A deeply informed, yet playful and ironic look at how the internet has changed human experience, memory, and our sense of self, and that belongs on the shelf with the best writings of Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard.

“One day, as I was daydreaming on the boulevard Beaumarchais, I had the idea—it came and went in a flash, almost in spite of myself—of Googling to find out what I’d been up to and where I’d been two evenings before, at five o’clock, since I couldn’t remember on my own.” So begins Maël Renouard’s Fragments of an Infinite Memory , a provocative and elegant inquiry into life in a wireless world. Renouard is old enough to remember life before the internet but young enough to have fully accommodated his life to the internet and the gadgets that support it. Here this young philosopher, novelist, and translator tries out a series of conjectures on how human experience, especially the sense of self, is being changed by our continual engagement with a memory that is impersonal and effectively boundless. Renouard has written a book that is rigorously impressionistic, deeply informed historically and culturally, but is also playful, ironic, personal, and formally adventurous, a book that withstands comparison to the best of Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Essays, Memoir, Technology

223 pages, Paperback

Published February 9, 2021

About the author

Maël Renouard is a novelist, essayist, and translator. He has taught philosophy at the Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure on the rue d’Ulm, of which he is a graduate. Between 2009 and 2012, he worked as a speechwriter for the prime minister of France. His novella La Réforme de l’opéra de Pékin (The Reform of the Peking Opera) received the Prix Décembre in 2013, and his novel L’Historiographe du royaume (The Historiographer of the Kingdom) was named a finalist for the 2020 Prix Goncourt.

Reviews

[Luke Lyman]

he makes a mistake on page 143 when he references the movie Trafic—the movie he’s actually referencing is a different movie by the same director, Playtime by Jacques Tati. kind of funny given how much of the book is about memory and it’s fickleness in the modern world and even funnier given the fact that both of those movies are about the nature of nostalgia and memory in the modern world AND EVEN FUNNIER given the fact that later in the book he recounts a whole anecdote where he kept confusing one movie experience with another

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many times while reading this nervy essay, I found myself wanting to dismiss it as an aimless contemplation of an increasingly detached reality. Part of me cannot deny that Maël Renouard's book is, at times, indeed aimless, but eventually I stopped anticipating some conclusive remedy for this particular brand of existential crisis. Renouard raises the "issue," so to speak, and that's good enough.

As I mentioned in updating my progress for Fragments of an Infinite Memory, I skipped over literally six pages of real YouTube comments that Renouard inexplicably feels the need to include in his writing. In a similar manner, some of his musings can be a bit tedious, but overall Renouard writes so well (and bravo to Peter Behrman de Sinéty for his brilliant translation) that his sheer prose often lulled me into a specific catatonia — one of admiration — that I haven't experienced since, say, Sartre.

French intelligentsia: it's just so different from (beyond?) American or even British thinking; I always have to wait for several dozens of pages before I'm fully immersed & settled into the tenebrous mindset of Continental erudition. For some reason I thought Renouard was just a journalist, but he's a bona fide essayist & philosopher who grandiloquently confronts some fleeting, nebulous problems that rightfully give him pause.

If you're not into the "stream-of-consciousness" style of writing, then I would skip this book. Renouard's chapters certainly come with central, topical themes, such as the question of anonymity, the expendable image, the anxieties of social media, but Renouard explores these themes in very roundabout ways that eventually come together in the end — a formalistic tactic that embodies his very thesis, i.e., that the internet & the never-ending archive are turning our minds into mush.

This book makes me want to log off the internet and experience life as it should be, as it once was experienced; without the need for documentation, with an urgent appreciation for its viscera.

Lastly, don't come into this book expecting statistics or scientific testing that measures cognitive capabilities. This book is none of that. It is anecdotal, it is curious, and it prods at something inconspicuously dreadful.

[Ebenmaessiger · Rating 3 out of 5]

in which i present some rambling responses to the work, largely incoherent to anyone who hasn’t read it:

His date of birth is important here. 1979. Not ‘69 and definitely not ‘89. 1979 puts him right in a sweet spot of internet engagement that allows for the type of diffident familiarity on display here, in which “that which is gone” will always remains coterminous with youth and the point at which — esp. for certain intellectualizing romantics — our idealized visions of the world “wie es eigentlich GESOLLT sei” are forged. and, at the same time, that youthful introduction to the medium (1979) has allowed for a relatively seamless transition to both the ease and functionality of internet usage. and I should know, being born in 1983, well enough within the range to share basically the same assumptions and experiences as Renouard towards the internet, towards our perception of what has been lost and what has been gained. a related question — about whether this chronological proximity predisposes me towards a sympathetic reading of the work — I’ll have to table for now.

…

possibly base to admit, but hard to deny, that some large degree of the pleasure of works like this (along with David Markson’s late works) comes in the bon mots, trivia, and anecdata collected in the epigraphic nature of the work (zum Beispiel: here, the aside about Charpak trying to hear “recordings” of the deep past inadvertently preserved in the vinyl-like grooves of classics Green pottery).
…

Whether intentional or not, many of his sections, especially in the chapter on death and the endurance of our digital presence, contradict the point he is seemingly trying to make about the psychological novelty of the Internet. For example, mentioning Gary’s story about a mother who schedules letters to her absent son, knowing that she will die, in allowing her to live on in his ignorance.

…

pg 69 = good

…

The danger here, of course, is that the very monumentality and malleability of the subject he is describing also makes any such diagnosis rapidly outdated. For example, he spends quite a bit of time discussing Facebook and its various, and shifting, unwritten rules and codes of ethics and etiquette, not quite factoring in transparently enough the ways in which these are already superseded by the crowd that will use them (Facebook users), and irrelevant to the crowd that doesn’t (anti Facebook), even if, most times, this latter group is actually more inundated with and deeply involved in Internet culture than the former. What I’m saying, in short, it’s just that young people don’t use Facebook.

…

An embarrassing 9th chapter (the classical symposium presented, however, as a modern-day Wikipedia and Facebook [the Universal Book of Faces]). Oof.

[Alex Long · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times this felt like the inane ramblings of a pompous academic scrutinizing banal trivialities with an unnecessary, lazer-focused intensity.
But that's not fair. The internet has infiltrated and shaped every aspect of life, for those of us in certain countries and priveliged economic positions, so it's useful to examine it philosophically.
I don't agree with everything the author writes. He's an atheist who believes in the possibility of uploading human consciousness onto computers in the future, heaven without any responsibility. But this isn't a text that tries to convince the reader of anything, it's just meant to track the writer's process of conceptualizing the human condition in an intermet-era context.

[Jean Kojali · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review hurts to write. I was so excited to read this essay collection, as it covers a major interest of mine: the consumption of technology, both personal and societal. This took me eighteen days to read, which for a 223 page book, is incredibly long for me. Though I considered DNF-ing this, there were some portions of the text that I had such a vile reaction to, that I was morbidly curious enough to push through. I'd say that 40% of this book made barely, if any, sense to me; 30% frustrated me so much that I had to put it down; and the remaining 30% was fine, but uninventive and relatively forced.

I want to be delicate here, because Maël Renouard is clearly a gifted intellectual and someone who I do not doubt is successful in his other work and his teaching. I am also extremely empathetic to the fact that everyone has a personal understanding of and experience with the internet - we are all living through this information revolution for the first time and it's scary and beautiful and weird and difficult to make sense of. I do not discourage the exploration of these emotions. However - I find that, overall, Renouard's essays, 'fragments,' lack a serious commitment to understanding the particular place in history that the internet was conceived and which is currently in use. There was much literary & cultural theory that I was impressed with, but every time I felt inspired, there was a heavy dose of anachronism waiting for me on the next page. I understand the natural human inclination to want to make sense of things, especially those things that may be dreadful and vapid and life-altering; however, not every historical development benefits from forcing a connection, a parallel, to another.

My experience with this book may have been doomed from the start, as I am not inclined toward the stream-of-consciousness prose style with non-fiction. It meanders and rambles - which is not necessarily a bad thing, it just personally does not mix well with my brain well.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wandering, associative thing that gives you a lot to chew on and which, written roughly a decade ago, remains extremely relevant and thought-provoking re: the internet and its influence on our lives. Hilariously, its back-cover copy says something about how it withstands comparison to the work of Roland Barthes. Barthes is unreadable. Renouard is eminently readable.

[Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am surprised to see this is not more famous on Goodreads. This is a very important book. It is about how digital tech changes the way we process and remember information and about our reasons for caring whether we process and remember it. It reminds me of, of, of, something I read about a year ago with a light-colored cover in one of my e-reader apps, I cannot remember the title or author, I have to look it up in my Goodreads: The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World by Laurence Scott, "read: Jul 23, 2020."

[DRugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful meandering meditation on the technological change of the internet and humanity’s relationship with time, memories, others, and ourselves.

[Vel Veeter]

This is a series of chapters, consideration, bricolage, thoughts, ruminations, and essays within the broader book about memory in the age of internet. It's at times a kind of meditations (and variations) on a theme, some precise thoughts on specific topics, almost a kind of autofiction, and many many referential moments. It's the kind of book that I often myself agreeing with, but also at times asking myself, is this good? Is this anything? Over all I would say what this book sets out to do is chart the parameters of the question: how has humanity and human capacity for knowledge, memory, and existence (of self? of mind?) changed, adapted to, been manipulated by the increasingly rapid development of the internet as a technology, as a medium, as a tool, and as a new mode of existence. Renouard is about my age, so our frames of reference for both the space of time being narrated here and for the seminal moments in our lives line up pretty well. He is in university dealing with the changes in technology far out-pacing the morals and ethics of research and writing, and his own sense of youth and morality working at about the same time my would have been. So a lot of our observations and questions are similar, but too often his feel shallowly explored.

There's a lot of insight here, but almost no rigor. This is NOT Neil Postman (and that's both good and bad). So while there's no false sense of solving this problem (good! -- you can't solve an unsolvable problem, if this is one) there's no really charting out the full territory or anything approaching. When it comes down to it, a lot of the book is: here's a thing that changed really quickly, right? So I wanted more exploration, and while that lack did make me begin to think more about things, I wanted this book to do a little more of that lifting.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 4 out of 5]

“In a philosophy of recollection — or of the internet as an immense recollection machine — life reunites with itself only in the separate world of memories, melancholically.”

[Seth · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up to 4

Renouard discusses how the internet has made our lives better and how it has not. For example, it makes finding information so much easier, but at the same time we no longer need to remember the answers to factoid questions, which he suggests might cause our memory faculty in other domains like our personal experiences to atrophy. He also discusses the sociological impacts of social media. He employs a nice selection of historical parallels to the internet and its capabilities, ideas from a wide variety of philosophical texts, and personal anecdotes. His examples are nicely curated, though his thoughts are only loosely ordered: he flips readily and abruptly between threads, and certain points seem to have cameos long after the bulk of their discussion.

The book provides lots of thought provoking ideas and gives a lot to reflect on. The personal anecdotes are quite engaging and are good illustrations of the author’s points. However, I found the middle of the book a bit of a slog and stepped away for a while.

It’d be interesting to see how the points in this book age.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are authors. There are texts. There are readers. And there are translators. What is a translator, and what is their role? Does the ideal translator see what the author sees and place themselves “in the place of the author in order to rewrite the text in another language as if it had been written in it in the first place”? Moreover, what is a text, and what is the role of text in our ultra-connected, internet-saturated society? What, indeed, is the role of memory and of our individual brains and thoughts? To participate in this inquiry, check out Fragments of an Infinite Memory by Maël Renouard—itself a work in translation. Question whether “we are on a firmly established, well-traveled path” of history and civilization and progress or “simply following our own ever more numerous tracks,” whether it’s possible anymore to forget or to be forgotten, whether it ever was, or whether “what has once been thought is never utterly lost, even when it no longer possesses a material inscription.”

[John]

I don't feel justified in offering a rating as I could not finish Renourd's book. Certainly the title intrigued me and carried allusions to Proust, In Search of Lost Time. After 90 pages, however, I found myself agreeing with the initial observations of Andrew, an earlier reviewer, that the book was "aimless contemplation of an increasingly detached reality." Renourd plays with concepts that are fascinating and insightful but after a time the book didn't seem to have any direction or organization despite having numbered but untitled sections I didn't see the difference between one chapter and the next and instead felt like I was swimming in a sea of thought experiments. I dunno, maybe it is the French way.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up to 4 - gleaned bits of insight about our relationship with the Internet. Some of his musings might seem commonsensical but Renouard phrases them so simply yet poetically that it's such a pleasure to read. The format of the book is a bit muddling though, each chapter is a series of thoughts connected to one idea, and read like someone's (very well crafted) bedside journal. He also makes a lot of references to literature, philosophy, films, and history, which might be a bit too much to take in for the casual reader. Personally took a while to get through the sheer amount of content. But was definitely worth a read (I feel a tad smarter now).

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed Maël Renouard's collection of ruminations on memory and art in the age of the internet. Renouard writes in that approachable-yet-intellectual tone that can sometimes disguise some of the more banal ideas presented here as something a bit more profound-- but in terms of an academic/public intellect writing about emergent technologies, Renouard still has a remarkably high batting average. He is great at pushing us to confront the possibilities that may develop as our collective and individual memory becomes increasingly digitized.

[Thikra · Rating 3 out of 5]

i loved this book although it was too detailed and some articales are out of topic, but overall it’s good, i saw some new and "underrated" prespectives of the impact of the internet.

“selling books on the internet at the price of 0.01 euros hadn’t yet arisen. But even this made books one of the cheapest commodities in the world, less expensive than vending-machine coffee or individually wrapped cigarettes. and yet the consumption of a book, even a very short book, takes far longer than drinking cup of coffee or smoking a cigarette.”

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aphorisms, anecdotes, allegories, day dreams, night dreams, and fictional sketches; all reflecting on how the internet has changed our lives, our daily patterns, and even the way we form our thoughts. Some of it is incredibly thoughtful and good, but other parts not so much. But, well, that's how it goes.

[michal k-c · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty fun, though I do find some of the reasoning and conclusions throughout to be a bit dubious at times. The final two pages of the book get at something real, something that is brought up on page 1, and I wish that it was the whole thing. Conceptually I think that a book entirely comprised of random YouTube comments could be beautiful

[Moon · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 /5 i think the book might be good but i wasnt the target audience for it so i didnt enjoy it. It took me months to get through because i couldn't find it captivating enough but i feel like maybe if i came back to this book like 10 years later i might enjoy it.

[Lukia · Rating 4 out of 5]

glancing at the reviews for this book, it appears it has not found its audience (in english at least). this is a really playful & meaty text with a clear sebaldian lineage. we need more lucid internet writing like this.

[August Bourré · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is so narrative-heavy I actually mistook it for a novel when I bought it. There are ideas worth exploring here, but alongside them are any number of facile and pedestrian observations about the Internet that make it clear Renouard is not especially savvy, he’s just interested.

[Sylvia Pu · Rating 5 out of 5]

其实就是，随着我们对于互联网的依赖，我们需要面对两种恐惧：一种是，有一天你生命中以数字形式存在的东西可能会突然消失——你未完成的稿件、亲人去世后拍下的蔚蓝的天空、早晨海水雾气里的城市、炫目的日光；另一种恐惧来自，你的所有个人生活的痕迹总是被互联网诚实地记录着，这些记录永远可以被找到，但你要接受全方位的监控，一丝不挂。作者觉得前者更恐怖，因为他已经预见了后者的必然来临。

[Prachi · Rating 4 out of 5]

At its core, this book is an intellectual version of *hits blunt* "bruh". But all about the internet and its pervasiveness. And I loved it.

[Maja · Rating 1 out of 5]

"It's becoming impossible to pass away."

[the ducks of absalom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fell off a cliff about 120 pages in. There’s a great essay inside this average book.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting; a bit much; a bit thin 7/10

[Chowder 3108 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the greatest book ever written for the internet age. Perfectly expresses a feeling that I cant express