Page - 253 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 3:2

253 | www.limina-graz.eu Chiara Zuanni | Heritage in a digital world thing other than an interfolding network of humanity and nonhumanity; today the mingling has become harder to ignore” (Bennett 2010, 31). The understanding of the agencies at play is not only crucial to frame the contexts of digital technologies, but it also affects the choice of preserva- tion and curation methods. In digital preservation, software is preserved through migration or emulation. Migration entails the transformation of the data in a format comprehensible to a contemporary software and hardware; emulation is instead the reproduction of the behaviours of an obsolete system on a contemporary system, thus enabling the use of old software. In both these cases, however, aspects of the “dance” between human and non-human components are getting lost: for example, an ar- cade game, if migrated, will likely have a different resolution and differ- ent commands; conversely, if emulated, it will lose aspects of the original experience anyway, e. g. the “surprise” and “innovation” a gamer could have admired only ten years ago, but which in comparison to contemporary technology lose their appeal. A better understanding of the vital material- ism (Bennett 2010) and intra-actions (Barad 2007) shaping digital experi- ences would therefore support more robust approaches to the understand- ing of the heritage values of these digital objects. If the above characteristics of digital objects affect their definition and un- derstanding as heritage, other aspects offer real and still unresolved chal- lenged to heritage professionals curating this material. Since museums are not neutral, the selection of digital cultures to represent in them is also deeply embedded in local, national, cultural and social structures. As ar- gued above, different social media platforms have different worldwide, age, and gender uptakes (e. g. Facebook, Weibo, VK, etc.) and people might perform different identities on each platform they join. In addition, ethics and legal frameworks differ across countries and thus access to, and use of, the data should be modulated against these frameworks while maintaining the aim of representing contemporary societies in a balanced and trans- parent way. I mentioned how the V&A collected a local copy of the Chinese social network WeChat for its design collection: however, the museum then chose to create new fictitious users, so as to protect the privacy of actual users of the platform while demonstrating the range of interactions this The selection of digital cultures to be represented in a museum is deeply embedded in local, national, cultural and social structures.