Harvard Prof Says Computers Need to Forget

Jessamine writes "A Harvard professor argues that too much information is being retained by computers, and the machines need to learn how to forget things as humans always have. "If whatever we do can be held against us years later, if all our impulsive comments are preserved, they can easily be combined into a composite picture of ourselves," he writes in the paper. "Afraid how our words and actions may be perceived years later and taken out of context, the lack of forgetting may prompt us to speak less freely and openly." Will such massive databases make us all act like politicians? Is data retention creating a "panopticon"? These are questions that the good doctor raises."

Comments

Re:Responsibility

[Dogtanian]

It's easy to say so now, but in 1992, someone posting to Usenet had no expectation that their comments would be archived forever and be easily searchable by anyone with an internet connection and 10 seconds to spare. This is quite true; there's a lot of adolescent drivel out there with my real name on it which I posted circa '93-95 (and some even later) that I didn't realise would be archived. Usenet then *was* seen to be ephemeral.

In the future, given the merging of information databases (including weblogs containing cookies and/or IPs) and data-mining software's improved ability to automatically spot patterns and "join-the-dots" connecting superficially unconnected identities, it wouldn't surprise me if it was trivially possible to find out who someone posting behind an anonymous account (today) was at some stage in the future.

Personally, I don't assume that *anything* I post on the Internet nowadays will remain unconnected with me forever.

As for the panopticon concept, if it gets really bad, it may be that human behaviour and attitudes will be forced into changing. Society may end up "accepting" that people say and do things in different contexts, and that no-one is perfect under the surface and politely disregarding such things in much the same way that city-dwellers pretend that the other people on a busy train aren't there.

Re:And in the spirit of things

[Intron]

What Churchill considered a conservative is very different from the current US neocon.