You can’t escape history – and why would you want to? Issue 004 of Digital Frontier is built around echoes through time, the moments from the past still infiltrating the present.  

Cyberfeminist artist Marisa Müsing rebalances ancient power dynamics with her work, giving figures from Pompeiian frescos a new voice. Neil Postman’s critiques of tv follow the same pattern as nearly all tech critiques that came before and after, can we break free of that cycle? And fraternal bonding over adult films in the 1960s is being recreated – in a much more meme-able way – on Reddit today.  

The echoes we uncover in this issue don’t all have historical references. We also investigate the reverberations of our unconscious – dreams – and how technology is changing how we understand them. We explore how the hive mind of the natural world is being reiterated in AI technology. And we interrogate the haunting aura of “On this day” notifications, and the non-linear nature of our social media feeds.  

Start with the physical rabbit holes in the cover and end by exploring our accompanying microsite, so you leave this issue of Digital Frontier more curious than you were when you picked it up.