Biographeme

Internet technologies have not only revolutionized the availability of knowledge but – under the catchphrase Web 2.0 – have also transcended conventional boundaries between producer and consumer in global information culture. Biographeme is the name of a project to develop a collaborative information platform that will connect biographical content with innovative forms of documentation and presentation in digital media. The narrative demand of biography will be integrated into the structure of social networks. Biographeme breaks down the closed linear mode of life narratives in favour of a modular form of biography, the individual components of which can be combined and recombined according to interest or depending on the question. Each user can decide their own path through the life of the biographical subject. At the same time the lives described will be set in social contexts. A comprehensive system of links and references will connect the biographies so that each individual can be seen as the centre of a network of other lives.

Users of Biographeme are also producers of biographical knowledge in that they are able to edit, interlink and expand the information provided. The platform will therefore become a self-structuring archive located where oral history meets new media. Finally, Biographeme not only allows individual lives to be seen from multiple perspectives but also documents complex political and social processes from a wide range of biographical standpoints.