Slashdot Mirror
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."
Sign of the times my friend, sign of the times.
ilovegeorgebush
I am really tempted to comment on this, but I'm worried that it will be archived and used against me later.
#!
Perhaps people should think a little more before they open their mouths, or in this case, apply their fingers to their keyboards. A computer record of your silliness is not much different than a person remembering some stupid thing you said many years before ... but at least it's more accurate.
God knows I've posted stuff on here I wish I hadn't
We as voters have given up essential liberty. We hoped to purchase a little temporary safety. We in fact deserve neither
I wanted to comment on this, but I'm not gonna...
Interesting, but we need to consider the human memory. Do we really 'forget' things? Or do we simply lose the 'links' to the memory, akin to deleting a file but not emptying it from the Recycling Bin. 'Psychics' like Derren Brown are able to get people to unlock memories they forgot they had - it doesn't mean we've forgotten the details themselves, just how to access them. We're not so different from computers after all.
You don't fix that a book can be taken the wrong way by burning the book.
Have Data Protection laws (as in the EU) which seem to revolve around the theme that data allowing one to identify a particular person is copyrighted to that person. Meanwhile, ensure that the Constitution is read in spirit to protect against the government even appropriating, let alone operating on, data without good reason.
Won't we eventually forget where we saved this stuff? Seriously, though, maybe a better solution is for people to stop getting offended about everything. Maybe if we weren't so obsessed with whether someone had ever posted something on the internet indicating they deviate slightly from societal norms and using that information to decide whether someone is qualified for a job or service this wouldn't be an issue.
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
Toast?... no, that's not right.
Coast?... not right either.
Most?... still doesn't sound right.
Gee I'm sure glad that humans can forget things, it would be so inconvenient if we remembered everything.
Joking aside, I use my computer precisely because it doesn't forget things and I do. While it may suck for humans to have history held accountable to them, what incentive do people have to NOT have a record of your actions?
Without an incentive, things don't usually change.
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
I got out of the army in 1988.
Best Slashdot Co
...but needs some context.
Quite happy for my old e-mails and old student website to be "forgotten" (makes me cringe looking on the Wayback Machine, hope my kids never find it).
Not so happy for my old digital photos to be forgotten. After all, I took those because I wanted to preserve information for the future - the purpose of most photos.
Definitely needs to be context-aware.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
If the worry is that things can be taken out of context then we have only two options: remember everything so context can be retained, or remember nothing. If computers 'forget' (can't we just say 'delete'?) some things and retain others then we'll have problems contextualising content.
Personally, I'd rather computers stored everything. Human history is only as rich as it is because scholars hundreds, even thousands, of years ago wrote things down. The periods of our past where writing was unusual are only known about through what amounts to educated speculation. How sad would it be that in the next thousand years there's no record of what we did and said because we're fearful of what some mysterious power might do with the archive?
The tin-foiled paranoids should be more worried about what a rogue power would do without any history to look back on. It works both ways: "Where were you on May 10th 1977? You don't remember? You have no record? YOU HAVE NO ALIBI! You must be guilty!".
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Right now, you can find 10 year old newsgroup postings from myself when searching Google. That is in my opinion too much data retention. I don't think they are particularly embarrassing now, but there was a time when my 10 year old newsgroup postings would have been posted when I was 14-15 or so.
They embarrasseed me, and I don't think I should be expected to be cautious about this issue when in my teens. People forget most of your silly mistakes from such a while ago but databases do not, unless you instruct them to.
At the moment, data is easy to create, but it is also easy to destroy, especially by accident. The constant churn in storage technologies and file formats ensures that anything which entropy does not destroy might become effectively unreadable in 10-20 years anyway. As it stands now, our digital short term memory lasts maybe decades without well considered, active maintenance.
Think about all digital photos that will certainly be gone in 50 years. (Not that this will be entirely a bad thing. The future probably doesn't want photos of people drinking beer while wearing pirate hats.)
... but hardly unique to computers. Newspaper, books, pictures, movies - they are all recording media that (presumably) never forgets. It's just a computer does a better job of finding where it put things.
...
Actually, it strikes me that the problem is not "forgetting" as much as it is remembering too well. We all remember the "good ole days"; the crux of the problem is the human mind looks back on events through the fog of experience. Events become shadows of their former appearances.
It would probably be easier to collectively "lighten up" about stuff
Wishful thinking.
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
It's not often I take time out from my high pressure and high profile work ( which I am currently excelling at, smashing all targets once again for the 12th consecutive year ) to comment on /. but I will make an exception in this case.
:-(
A lot of people have, quite rightly, highly praised my work for charity and the modest advances I have been able to bring to many areas of scientific endeavour and whilst I am obviously too modest to trumpet these achievments myself it would be nice if future employers or business partners were able to locate them on the web.
Employers especially can often be faced with seemingly excellent prospective employees only to find later on the full details of their sordid obsessions have been documented fully on the web for years. For myself, an excellent choice for almost any position you would want to fill, I welcome scrutiny on the web since I am confident this will simply highlight my excellent skills at driving projects forward and delivering truly innovative and groundbreaking solutions ( at a low low price ) not to mention my near legendary interpersonal and team building skills and a level of honesty which has in some quarters become a byword for "Solid Gold Standard".
Certainly it has been said that there is no finer employee than myself to truly add value to any business and that as a business partner I cannot be beaten.
It's just tragic that the network appears to be moving ahead of the scientists at this point and appears to be in the throes of some sort of dementia with regards to information about me. I think it's mistaken me for someone else
People just need to learn to stop taking things out of context.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
While previous comments about how computers are 'meant' to remember, and sometimes how we 'want' them to remember things are valid - The prof.'s observations strike me as very insightful.. I think he's got a valid point - because today 'data' is not a cold hard silicon number inside the machine anymore.. Data is coming closer and closer to our everyday life, getting enmeshed into our societal networks, becoming richer and closer to omnipresence. I feel that the human brain's habit of 'forgetting' in this context - is akin to forgiving (sins, crimes, sharp comments, mistakes, hurts), overcoming, healing (trauma, abuse, extreme emotions, stress), refreshing (what makes every meal a joy, every orgasm a pleasure or every waft of cool air on hot skin so nice), evolving (views, outlooks, understanding, positions). As information in a machine comes closer and closer to becoming our sensory inputs, records of our society and lives, of our behavior and views, our crimes and grievances, what have you - isn't it important that there be ways to forgive, overcome, heal, refresh and evolve without the same information coming back into our lives again and again and again...? Dunno if i've been able to convey what I feel.. a distinct chill when I think of not being able to (or allowed to) forget..
If I leave, everything I've said will still be there and attributable to me long after my views might have changed
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?RightToVanish
I use a different user name on every online forum (except for this one and www.revleft.com). This is a precautionary measure to make it harder to link all my online personas. Of course, it is possible, if you have sufficient computing power and/or access to the machines (and their logs) that I have used. However, for a simple search it is not easy. I have also attempted (well I do now anyway) to create usernames that are not easily found by a simple search (except that "apathy maybe" now comes up for both RevLeft and Slashdot, where as previously it didn't...). Another precaution I take, is to edit forum posts to remove personal information (or else simply not post that information).
Along with the right to vanish, I think that every website should, once the relevant information such as browser stats and geographical stats (if relevant) should delete all their logs.
Privacy is something that has to be fought for by the individual, and by those who control websites and online communities.
I wank in the shower.
I believe that data retention will lead to less strict attitudes about what people have said in the past. Common sense dictates that a person's values and beliefs change over time. What someone once said need not necessarily be held against them later.
;)
What happens, happens. The fact that something is recorded does not change that.
That being said, I do think twice about what I post online.
PS. I live in Finland, Europe... So I'm a bit biased by not living in a police state
.: Max Romantschuk
I must admit that the idea is interesting, but also very scary. I agree with the professor that computers can store perhaps a bit too much about yourself. On the other hand, you don't want to do much in front of the computer that might end up lost.
Part of the reason that we use computers is because it is a solid way of archiving data. Ultimately, you are responsive for your opinions, views, comments and letters. Should you create and hold sensitive material, then you probably know how important it is to keep it safe anyway.
Full Tilt
From the summary: "If whatever we do can be held ... they can easily be combined into a composite picture of ourselves."
/SARCASM
Oh my $DEITY. We wouldn't want people to actually be able to know something more than what anyone lets on at the moment.
Here's a thought: Maybe it's not a bad thing to be able to be able to look at a person's history. If someone cannot consistently keep a cool head in public, that's valid information. If they once espoused a certain opinion, and have since changed their mind, that's valid, too. If they deny they stated something, rather than simply saying they've changed their mind, that's valid, too. People can change, opinions can change, one statement does not make a person what they are.
The real issue is that people are too quick to judge based on incomplete information. Computers make that flawed process easier, just like they make so many other things easier.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Whatever you do, don't tell anyone. Words to live by.
I am not an animal! I am something worse!
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22940&ci d=2467504
;)
So how about it, Slashdot, lets start deleting old database entries.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I help manage a lot of medical information. Clearly, some of the stuff that people can be treated for is downright embarrassing. The catch is, if we start purging data that might fall into some vague "I don't want my mom to know" category, we won't be able to treat the person to the best of our ability now. One's health is often the sum of one's medical history. A tiny problem that showed up ten years ago might be related to the serious problem today.
The whole point of medical systems is to supplement forgetful humans and improve communication when dozens of caregivers are involved with a patient's health. I can't imagine ever wanting to go back to the days of paper charts.
"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"
I'm not worried about computers doing this - the same thing applies to my wife. <rimshot/>
(Note to prospective employer in 2041: The above is a joke. Please give me a job.)
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
"while my good friend senator brown has presented himself to you as a family friendly candidate, i am only trying to help the american public understand him better if he were to be elected come december rather than myself, by bringing to light some grave AIM chat scripts from june 2006..."
"When i was 14 years old"
"now senator, you need to own up to what you say and do, take some personal responsibility, isn't that what you keep pressing as a message on your constituents?"
"moderator, i think that now would be a good time..."
"ehem, william brown: 'OMFG, look at this lolcat'"
"moderator"
"unidentified individual only known as counterstrike-masterstrafer03: 'wtf, "i are serious cat", omfg, lol'"
"moderator!"
"william brown: 'you like pussy cats?'"
"moderator!"
"counterstrike-masterstrafer03: 'i like the cock fights, if you know what i mean, lol'"
"moderator i must insist at the totally inappropriate..."
"william brown: 'a/s/l?'"
"alright, if my opponent insists on this kind of personal negativity i am only compelled to bring to the attention of the american public a log of eMule downloads for a certain ip address of 165.45.23.100 in april of 2002, does that ip sound familiar mr. gordon?"
"how dare you"
"ehem, 'bangbus 25: lisa and raoul'"
"moderator"
"'spanking nannies 3, the return of mistress oblivion'"
"moderator!"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You could make a similar argument against history. Let's forget that nasty Nazi thing, it's really not our best effort, after all. Slavery? Never happens. Inquisition? The church would never do that. The list, unfortunately, goes on.
There is some value in leaving the past behind. However, even if prior actions are forgiven, or seen as mitigated by context, they needn't be forgotten. Everyone's done things they'd rather deny, would maybe pretend never happened. But such negative actions define us as much, or even more, than positive actions. The results of such actions maybe even caused change and growth. It's part of being human.
I wonder if this guy has ever read a flame war. Who thinks there's a danger of people not speaking freely enough?
-Dave
On the other hand it could bring a break through where seeing everyone does it the idea that people change their mind when presented with enough information or different circumstances might allow more honesty from politicians. They can say "this is what I knew then and this is what I know now wouldn't I be stupid to still think that?"
I suppose safety in numbers.
I've contributed to a bunch of forums in the past where settings were available to have the system "eat" posts that remained inactive for X amount of time.
Eek!
Similar to how the brain works (AFAIK, I'm not a biologist, etc.), the issue is whether you can find data, not whether it's stored.
Things that you have forgotten may still be stored somewhere, but the connections needed to retrieve the actual "data" are lost, so you cannot get to the actual information.
Something similar happens with computers, I may have an e-mail/IM archive over the past 10 years or so, but if I don't know what (combination of) keywords to look for, I won't be able to find anything. It's simply too much information.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
My computer forgets me all the time. I pass by in the morning and say "hello, friend" and it would respond "who are you?", I'd say "it's me, you must remember me!" but oh no, it wouldn't believe me and refuse to let me in without a fight.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
I'm all for personal responsibility, but this isn't as simple as standing by what you once said.
For one thing, no-one is perfect. If I took offence every time one of my friends said or did something a little childish or hurtful to another of my friends, I would have few friends left, yet I know that all of my friends are basically nice, decent people, who on balance I am glad I met. Magnify this up to the whole world stage, and suddenly the whole world is an a**hole.
Secondly, people's views change for many reasons, not all of them bad, and society as a whole is not good at recognising this. Just look at what happens to politicians today who change their position on an issue. "U-turn! U-turn!" As I've pointed out before, even in politics it is silly to think that our elected representatives have the time to fully study each issue on which they vote in the same detail as an expert, or to retain a staff of suitably smart and qualified people who can at least advise them well. Wouldn't you rather be represented by someone who would change their mind if they realised their previous position was short-sighted or ill-informed, rather than one forced by the system to stick to their guns even if they knew they had made a mistake?
I've commented on this subject before on Slashdot, in the context of social networking sites. I think humanity needs to learn that in a highly-connected world, you have to be careful what you say, you have to be wary of reading too much into what others say, and most important of all, you have to cut people a little slack sometimes. Right now, IMHO, our laws don't place nearly enough value on privacy, and I think this is a painful lesson that we are going to learn as an entire generation who grew up with the likes of Facebook, Myspace and LiveJournal run into problems for the next few decades.
Bottom line: kids will be kids, adults will behave like kids sometimes, even the most mature and responsible adult makes mistakes, and all of this is only human. I, for one, would prefer not to live in a world where everyone's dirty laundry was aired in public, with full search features.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
...but its all used for the common good. (meaning: never used against me)
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
People need to learn to protect their private data.
People need to make sure potentially self-harmful things they say on the net can never be connected to their real persona.
People used to protect and hide their diaries, now they just put it in the net for everyone to read.
This is SILLY, computers will not forget and won't have to forget.
It's the PEOPLE who have to REMEMBER that.
Which makes especially old memories a lot less reliable than we used to think. Which also is the basis for the phenomenon of people recreating their memories to what they want to remember. When someone strongly believes in a factually wrong memory of a certain event, even if he had been there and seen it as it happened, it may well be because at some point in time, after remembering and slightly changing the memory in a desired direction often enough, he might simply have no other memory left of the event.
If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart.
If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.
- falsely attributed to Winston Churchill
What the good doctor is missing is that you are the whole picture. Everything that happened in your life, good and bad has lead you to where you are today. To deny/forget the bad would make you less of a human. I am still that 11 year old kid who played D&D and cried when that jerk of a DM killed my 35th level mage that I cheated to make. I'm still the guy who in high school managed to seduce the hottest girl in school. I'm still the guy who took 4 grams of mushrooms on a road trip from Austin to New Orleans to make the time pass (though I wasn't driving). I'm still the guy who was on the Longhorns SouthWest Conference championship Lacrosse team. I'm still the guy who failed out of college 3 years later. I'm still the Sp.ED teacher who worked for 7 years teaching autistics before realizing I could live up to my family obligations on a Sp.Ed teachers salary. I'm still the guy who defaulted on some significant debts in my 20s. I'm still the jerk who told that girl I loved her only so I could sleep with her...
I'm still the good husband and mighty developer I am today. But all because of all that stuff in the past.
I completely understand what was IMPLIED by the article, but I that that is an issue of privacy, not of computing. And to imply that people should forget about their past (or others) doesn't seem like a good idea. I am about as anti-religion as you can get, but I recognize the powerful words "...and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."
Forgive, but don't forget. Remember where you came from, and what you overcame.Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
Well, Bill Gates knew this all the time. He even gave a rule of thumb to decide when there's too much data stored about you, so it is time to delete some of it: 640K ought to be enough for anybody.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Yet another overreaction to social change. It's different, it's scary because... it involves computers. The problem has existed ever since the first Egyptian wrote a love letter on papyrus.
Nothing new here. People will worry about it a bit every time a new problem breaks, then they'll forget and start committing imprudent things to electronic storage just as they always committed them to paper.
Why, very first Sherlock Holmes story, A Scandal in Bohemia deals with this very problem:
"Your Majesty, as I understand, became entangled with this young person, wrote her some compromising letters, and is now desirous of getting those letters back."
"Precisely so. But how--"
"Was there a secret marriage?"
"None."
"No legal papers or certificates?"
"None."
"Then I fail to follow your Majesty. If this young person should produce her letters for blackmailing or other purposes, how is she to prove their authenticity?"
"There is the writing."
"Pooh, pooh! Forgery."
"My private note-paper."
"Stolen."
"My own seal."
"Imitated."
"My photograph."
"Bought."
"We were both in the photograph."
"Oh, dear! That is very bad! Your Majesty has indeed committed an indiscretion."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
How hard would it be to put an expiration date on files? Say one or two years, and the file is deleted. There would also be archive files that would never delete. The original creator would decide on whether the file, or post, was archive or expiration. How many things have you posted online that really need to be here in two years?
You have heard of Jeremy Bentham yes? (One of the first real utilitarians, who helped to raise John Stuart Mill, a classical liberal.) He wrote of the Panopticon, a prison where at any time the guards could see what any of the prisoners were doing. Of course, the prisoners could never see what the guards were doing (or know when they were under surveillance). Things are much easier now with the advent of CCTV. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
Foucault, he wrote a lot on the idea. But the original was from Bentham. George Orwell's 1984 also describes a "panopticion" society, whether he got his idea from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (a novel about a society where all the buildings are built of glass) is debatable.
Today, the idea of the panopticon (literally, seeing or observing all) has moved beyond prisons into the wider society. Take Britain for example, with its millions of cameras. Yet shit loads of these are actually fake. The UK is now, to a certain extent, a "panopticon" society. At one movement, you might be being watched. But you don't know when, or really even by whom.
In the context of the article, computers are "all seeing", that is, they can see everything you have written. In this case, it only covers part of your actions, and not all of them.
I wank in the shower.
Opinions, views and personality of a person can alter over time. Having this available could prove to be exceptionally beneficialy in writing someone's biography and or considering them for important positions.
Would you want someone who once was foolish (as many/most of us were) who later developed into a very mature and well reasoned individual or someone who has never matured and still acts the part of the fool over the course of their life working an important position?
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Just because something -can- be detrimental doesn't mean it always is, or that the opposite is necessarily the solution. Being able to forget that time I went out with a real weirdo is great. Forgetting about my wife's birthday... not so great.
The same goes for computers. I'm sure that people wish their questionable forum posts from when they were teenagers spouting nonsensical crap could be automatically deleted, but what about useful information such as technical forums discussing hardware issues. Who decides what will be forgotten, and when?
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
I disagree with the conclusions of Mayer-Schönberger, though I agree with the main logic of his argument.
I believe making all public archives "forgetful" would be (A) disastrous to research in history, philology, and linguistics (e.g.) and of course to political accountability, and (B) almost impossible, at least without a technological monoculture (e.g. Microsoft runs all the blogs).
Instead, we have to adapt our culture to the inevatible presence of modern technology. This means that if someone once made racist, paedophiliac, hateful, misogynic, androgynic, stupid, schizofrenic etc. remarks, this should not in any way be held against them when they later in life want to become a politician, teacher, babysitter, policeman etc. We will simply have to assume that people can change and restrict ourselves to looking at their most recent behaviour and opinions.
Changing our culture in such a way might sound impossible (and to some people undesirable), but I think it's far more possible (and desirable) than changing our technology in the way Mayer-Schönberger proposes.
It is also possible that such a cultural change would be a natural consequence of information about everybody becoming available, rather than it making us all into politicians.
Compare then with now
The good doctor is complaining because people might feel pressure to be more circumspect in the words and actions because their history may, at any time, return to haunt them. Is that really a bad thing, or is he just worried that all those years of being subscribed to Marxist Weekly (or whatever) may undermine his credibility as a professor of government?
Canthros
Do you want to see people denied employment because they wrote an obnoxious athiest essay when they were 16? Should someone be considered a probable druggie if they wrote a Slashdot post advocating drug legalization? Should they be considered a subversive because they wrote a post saying people shouldn't be held without trial, or that torture is wrong? This isn't just about silliness or stupid stuff, though there is of course enough of that to go around.
I am in no way qualified to comment on this matter but what the hell, i always thought it wasent so much that humans forget stuff, more that we surpress.
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
I think the long time recording of everything will bring about a better understand of each other.
I stick by all the posts I've ever made, some may have been incorrect or my opinion may have changed since I wrote them, but I stick by the fact that for that time in my life they were correct for me.
With everbodys posts stored forever, everybody is going to have lots of posts that could be seen as bad by potental employers, partners etc. but because this will be something that effects everybody it won't be a problem.
and if a employer didn't hire you because they didn't like that photo of you out drinking with your friends, then you probably don't want to work there anyway.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
I am disturbed by the increasingly common practice of websites requiring you to create and save Security questions pertaining to various personal details. Were someone to save and collate the answers to such questions over time, they would have knowledge of quite a large knowledgebase of personal backgrounds - as though everyone put up a MySpace profile!
Yes, I could and I have started to make up fake answer to such questions. But that means having to remember what the fake answers are. So it's no better than an additioinal password. I think we need a better solution to recovering forgotten passwords.
OK, it didn't forget, but it did crash and I lost everything. I forgot to make backups, so in turn the computer "forgot" all my data. The solution, don't back your old data, eventually it will be forgotten.
Computers (and incidentally AI) is just that - a tool. What good is it to make something that is "just like humans" (or indistinguishable from them, to paraphrase Turing)? Rather make something that is better than humans at one particular skill, e.g. remembering facts, or making objective decisions, or operate in dangerous situations.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
That's what FAT32 was designed for.
I'm still the guy who took 4 grams of mushrooms on a road trip from Austin to New Orleans...
...I'm still the guy who failed out of college 3 years later
...I'm still the guy who defaulted on some significant debts in my 20s
Yeah, I think we see enough of your "whole picture" rather clearly.
The fact that we know our every word is recorded sure hasn't stopped George Bush from providing the late night talk shows with plenty of "Bushisms".
Windows computers already do! They forget .dll files... they forget .ini files... they forget registry settings...
They do it all the time too!
You're using her as bait, Master!
What I conclude from this article is that Harvard needs to renew his professors soon.
So in order not to take stuff out of context, the best way is to forget the context...
Humans do not forget. Humans never forget. Do they synthesize? could be...
This sounds like an attempt of censure. As an advise for those who like to censure stuff, Ill say people may forgive you but people DO NOT FORGET.
I dont really think theres anything enherintly wrong with eternal memory, that said though the powers that be have shown that they have no quams using this information to their own advantage (think taken out of context for example). This type of abuse of information would be my concern more than the data existing in the first place. Like nearly everything in this world information is a tool, its how you use it that counts
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
Interesting article, but some of his ideas don't add up for me.
Firstly, if computers will remember everything we say, why will things be remembered out of context? If anything it will be harder in the future then ever before to take things out of context because everything about that time and that situation will also be remembered. No more situations where only one side of a conversation can be recounted because only one person saved their letters, instead we'll have perfect record of both sides of the discourse in the form of e-mails or blog entries.
Secondly, even if we don't want computers to remember everything and we come up with computers that "forget" and laws that enforce their use, anyone who wants to remember everything can still choose not to forget. No doubt government agencies would be exempt from any such laws, and of course there are plenty of people and organisations who would be happy to run the very small risk of getting caught to keep an indefinite record. The people you don't want to have that information will still have it, except now there won't be a public record to retain the context of the situation. This increases the likelihood of the "perfect memory" being used in a negative way by removing it from publicly accessible databases.
It seems far more sensible to stop living in a mudslinging character assassinating world. Something like this will force that to happen. Nobody will consider long term consequences of their speech or online actions when growing up so this would be the great leveller. If everyone can get something on everyone else then it just becomes meaningless and trivial.
We still need better data protection laws though. Just not for the exact reasons given here. There's a big difference between losing the ability to forget and losing privacy.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Will such massive databases make us all act like politicians?
No, it will be worse. Because politicians will be the only ones that will have the influence to be able to "clean up" their records.
Consider Bush. We know he was the black sheep of the Bush family. We know he used to drink a lot. It's likely he did drugs. And yet there is little evidence of this at all, and I bet any journalist that tries to dig up that kind of dirt on Bush will hit a brick wall. Perhaps literally.
Yes, it's true specific incidents can last seemingly forever on the internet. But when you look at the increase in available data, it's staggering. And that data is spread out around hundreds of servers in different formats. But the more data, the more junk data. Outdated, incorrect entries and, sometimes, forged entries.
I manage a lot of data and have learned over the years how easy it is to pollute that well. Users are ingenious in their ability to get crap information in a system, no matter how tight you think your validation is. And importing data from an outside source...lol...even more of a nightmare. The ability of the internet to store information long term can also be used to hide information by clouding the waters.
So, years ago I started polluting my personal online data well. Instead of one or two profiles, I'd have five or six, all different. Different addresses, phone numbers, cities, states even race and gender. Five turned into ten, turned into 15 or 20 and then I lost count. Started doing the same thing to my online resumes. Cloned the resume under a different name, address and phone number. Created new resumes with the name withheld or changed with many subtle variations, swapped out phone numbers, email addresses. Started masking personal information behind my own LLC. Turned into my own personal Wild Weasel. Which one of the clones is really me? Hard to tell.
Haven't done that to my direct marketing profile and credit report...yet. But the day may come when I want to poison those wells. Don't need instant credit, pay cash for almost everything, including cars. You can play hell with your credit report by getting a camper or a boat and living on one of them for a while. I could park in my nephews back 40 for a couple months. Or live overseas, almost as good. Use PO boxes, change addresses so many times no one can keep up. Have one address for drivers license and vehicle registrations, a different one for online orders, another one for tax purposes. Use the wife's cell phone one week, mine the next. Change phone numbers twice a year. And, ironically, it's computers that give me the ability to keep up with all the different versions of myself.
No matter how good you are at consolidating data, there's always going to be someone like me with the knowledge to crap it up and make you work at manual consolidation. Got a lot of spare time on your hands to figure that out? :)
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Sadly and in a way very scary, the U.S. is on the lead in using the net against people. As Professor Andrew Feldmar, a well-known Vancouver psychotherapist learned, when it comes to the current U.S. government, and the use of the Patriot Act, a simple border patrol officer, or a normal cop, can google your name and "decide" what kind of person you are. Laws like the Patriot Act, put way too much power in the hands of low level security workers, that with the internet tools can ban, and maybe even incarcerate anyone on their sole judgment. Prof. Feldmar wrote an article published in the spring 2001 issue of the journal Janus Head. The article concerned an acid trip Feldmar had taken in London, Ontario, and another in London, England, almost forty years ago. It also alluded to the fact that he had used hallucinogenics as a "path" to understanding self and that in certain cases, he reflected, it could "be preferable to psychiatry." The guard didn't like what he saw, and pulled him off the line and in to a nightmare that hasn't really finished. He has been baned to enter the U.S. for ever due to "narcotics" use. LSD is not a narcotic substance, Feldmar tried to explain, but an entheogen. The guard wasn't interested in technicalities. He asked for a statement from Feldmar admitting to having used LSD and he fingerprinted Feldmar for an FBI file. I don't think computers should "forget" stuff, in this case for example, the computer would have to forget the professor's work entirely. I think the use of the internet as a weapon against people is just ripe for a government like the current U.S. administration. I wish we could just forget despot laws and politicians, but the net will never forget.
If you've never heard the graunching noise which a hard disc drive makes as the computer "forgets" your last week's work then you haven't been working with computers long.
This just oozes the modern demand that everyone be absolved of all responsibility for their actions.
Didn't get a job because your prospective employer say pictures of you partying naked in a mound of cocaine with Yasser Arafat on your Facebook page? The obvious solution is to ban employers from looking at Facebook.
People can look up your old comments on the internet and you're afraid you might look like an asshole? Clearly the internet should have an expiry date after which it forgets your comments.
Why can't people just engage their brain and think before they post stuff on the internet? Personal responsibility FTW.
Life needs more saving throws.
The right to vanish??
Didn't you know that only ninjas have the right to vanish, and they are still required to leave behind an annoying smoke cloud that fills your sinuses in the process.
that forgetting the truth will set us free.
...A law would decree that "those who create software that collects and stores data build into their code not only the ability to forget with time, but make such forgetting the default." From a security point of view, all you would need to do to cause chaos, would be to change the system clock, and the data would start to erase. The number of compromises would be horrible. If there was any way to change the system clock, you could force lawful applications to erase their data.From a commercial point of view, the cost of adding functions, and redesigning code that works on the assumption that data is permanent is incalculable, it'd be worse then all the reprogramming that went into y2k.
what i believe hes getting mixed up, is not forgetfulness, but privacy. Not everything needs to, nor should be recorded for the records. And of that which is, most of it should be kept confidential.
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
Because I already know how it will be implemented. I've been living on this planet long enough.
First of all, no data connected to any "normal" person would ever be removed, because he could be a terrorist and we could still need his info to sniff him out when computers are finally "good enough" to connect the dots. No data of that shall ever be wasted or lost.
Second, any incriminating data that could lead to a politician's arrest or that would make a three letter agency look bad will immediately be destroyed on grounds of said paper and the fact that you can't hold something against someone after 50 years...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... when we get enough of a collection of human ... whatever... then we can look back on it in honesty and start looking for the reasons/cause rather than hiding the symptoms.
The lesson of history is to not make the same mistakes.
Those who don't want to learn the value of history, want to repeat it.
1) forget history
2) repeat it.
3) profit
From a management point of view, storing "all" your data indeterminately will cause ever-increasing storage (and access!) costs, so "forgetfulness" is already being implemented by neccessity. While storage costs go down, if your storage volume goes up FASTER, you WILL hit some point after which the cost/amount growth will be exponential rather then linear for any given technological level.
In other words, the cost of storing "everything" depends on how fast your "everything" grows. After it hits a (moving) point, your costs will skyrocket.
If you say something online in a place you don't have the power to delete it. It could be used against you someday. i don't think computers need to forget but people need to learn to watch what they say and what they put online. it's just common sense and i don't think it's going to make us all act like politicos. As far as Americans having a long memory and holding things against people, Bush is a prime example of how that is not completely true. The guy drove drunk and was arrested for it during a time that most cops would just scold you and tell you to go straight home. All the rumors of his coke habit didn't seem to hurt come election time either. But none of that has to do with online comments, pictures, etc. The guy makes some valid points but I seriously doubt anyone's online behavior besides those that are thinking about or are in politics are going to change.
WTF?
Why does he target computers? Would not any recording medium be suject to such an arguement, including simple pencil and paper? Anyway, it not a single application or system that perserves information, but rather the high-level process which encompasses hardware maintenance and backups. In my experience, computers very easily "forget", its called a hard drive failure.
A standard lesson in any text on adaptive control/filtering is the employment of a "forgetting factor". Roughly speaking, if X is your estimate of how something works and you're constantly updating your estimate, heuristically speaking you do something like
X(new) = e^{-\lambda t}X(old) + (estimate based on new information)
That way, as the system slowly changes over time, your estimate is not "stubborn" in thinking that it must always act the same way. Not only is this a good idea, in many cases it is absolutely essential in making something work.
m0nstr42.blogspot.com
It will be relevant when we will have a reliable identification online. Each citizen that would like to use the Internet should have a PGP key to identified them. This way we could use the Internet as we use life, without being able to pretend to be anyone else...even it should be harder to do so. That way, information gathered about each of us would be of trust. Of course anonymous or pseudo username surfing is relevant about the picture it gives of us generally, but aren't we wanting the Internet to become part of real life too? In order to become effective and bring some health in this world, Internet should know us, we human. Even know us much more that our country. What identifies us? What's better to identify us? What is better the technology has invented yet? PGP, username, or social security number? Why is it so slow to adopt technology that can serve us in a better way.
A radio serialisation of Orwell's 1984 finished here the other night and I found myself listening again to the last few bleak installments. The premise of that extreme dystopian view is that you willingly forget everything while Big Brother remembers everything, and that sounds like exactly where the professor's half baked idea (400k PDF) would lead us in practice.
Please keep it all and more, so that idle process in some unimaginably rich future environment which finally gets far enough down the list of reincarnation candidates will have access to the maximum possible amount of data surviving from first time around, enough data that new process it spawns will be happy it is me.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
My first thought is to say shut up old man; I bet your grandfather felt people shouldn't get their news from the newspaper and telegraph. I am sure that the youngwer generations, having lived in a world where ANYTHING can be recorded for future indemnification, will be more concious as to what they do in public. Then I remembered my teenage years. While it doesn't change my thoughts about this old coot complaining about short skirts and "touch dancing", it changes my reasoning thusly: If EVERYONE has embarrassing/incriminating dirt in their past (which they do), and anyone can bring that up for anyone else to see, it will lose it's power. I realize this is the "if everyone owned a gun" argument, but it applies here better after all, if everyone used their guns we would all die, but if everyone uses their dirt, we just all end up dirty.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
In Gmail, you delete the messages, then use your Gmail as usual. If you remember something important, recover from Trash. This way it's easy to say "goodbye" for most of the unnecessary data.
The same works for HDDs, CDs, etc. For example, you clean a spare HDD, and make a copy only of the files that you actually opened. After 1 month has passed, distroyed all the other data. Leave only the new HDD.
Very easy.
http://id3as.livejournal.com/
I think the problem is not that we're retaining everything, but that we're retaining only pieces. I'm sure there is blog activity I've partaken in that is no longer connected or attributable to me; there are pictures out there that don't have my name associated with them. This has always been the case - there have always been things people have done that they are no longer associated with. This is, presumably, because we can only remember a small amount, and what we choose to remember tends to be the more important things.
Which brings us to the second problem; context. If you take a complete record of someone's life, you have no inherent way of knowing which parts are more 'them' than other parts. 'Memory' and 'forgetting' tends to leave behind those parts that are going to most inform the decisions of a person in the future - which is all that you care about. You don't care about someone's history so much as you care about how they would make choices in the present. That's why you want to know their past. A complete record does not help you so much with this; you can see the decisions they've made, but turning that into a predictive model is hard. Meaningless decisions and events may not have changed them much, whereas others will have hit them quite hard.
I think back to all the boards I've read and I think I can recall most of them - but certainly not all. And certainly not all the comments I made. They were superficial in my life, ultimately. I don't care about them. Neither should anyone else. But there does need to be a culture of awareness over the fact that if you dredge up a comment positively attributable to me, it may still not mean much to me. We're going to have to evolve beyond the, "Well, you said or did [x], therefore aren't who we want you to be."
[Ego]out
Net Handle.
Hmm...you know come to think of it that could come back around to you as well.
"It's amazing what velocity can do when human beings are in season" -Matthew Good
rm -rf /
What about that?
Will such massive databases make us all act like politicians?
Actually, the presence of archived messages on mailing lists and Usenet from my teens -- some twenty years ago -- ensures that I would never even consider running for office. I'm not sure this is unique to net culture, though. It's not like raking public figures over the coals for their 'youthful indiscretions' is anything new. Politicians have always been worth the effort. What's new is that it's so easy now that it becomes worth the effort for ordinary people. Every time I have a job interview, I am always dreading a visit from the Ghost of Usenet Postings Past.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
That's what the good professor is really worried about. Someone being able to write an alternate history besides an ordained priest from Harvard university, using a simple search engine (or in the restricted future, some sort of search on a private hard drive), and doing a better job. And also being able to research the Harvard high priest who wrote the official whitewash, so that he can be identified as not just a name assumed to be authoritative and objective but a real live person with a background and an agenda. Fancy that!
At the moment there is no real memory hole. Which was in large part what enabled the world of 1984 to function. TPTB would declare "Oceania is at war with Eurasia, we've always been at war with Eurasia." And Winston Smith and co would dutifully clip out any conlicting references.
But now 'tinfoil hat wearing' 'paranoid' 'conspiracy theorists' can say "'Ang on a sec mate! Oceania was at war with Eastasia just 10 years ago, and we were at peace with Eurasia then. Why, 'ave a look 'ere at this 'ere photo, it shows Big Brov shaking hands with Dear Leader Foo Wang! Wot do ya make of that, then?"
So this professor wants us to all have default erased family photographs, records and the like, expecting us to believe that Big Brother is dutifully doing the same thing, so it can't embarrass us at some future time. Because "forgetting is so central to society's fundamental values".
Who the hell is he kidding?
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
""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.""
He is going to regret saying this one day!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Now that we know all that stuff about you we are more likely to pre-judge you, whereas if we had met you without knowing any of that you'd have a fresh chance to make an impression because what happened in the past doesn't necessarily define who you are today but it's hard for people to leave things that happened in the past where they belong.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Perhaps, bureaucracies should also forget. Or paper records. Or diaries. Or newspapers. Or historical records.
No, we should keep all this data intact. It's all very important, no matter how banal it might seem to us right now.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
On the most basic level data storage is just a tool, and like any other tool it's true worth/morale value is determined by how you use it. Do you hear people crying out that we should do away with hammers or create a bunch of laws limiting their use just because you can break someone's bones with it? No, it has a myriad of other important and good uses and we leave it up to individuals to use the tool correctly. If you're afraid of what a hammer might do to you, then just don't use one. The same applies to data storage. If you don't like storing all of that data, then don't store it. Nobody is forcing you to take pictures with a digital camera, have a blog, search on Google, or any of the other things that create the mentioned "digital footprint". It's called agency (the ability to choose for yourself), and I recommend that people start using it instead of demanding a bunch of laws to make all of the decisions for us.
Computers forget very easily, hit SHIFT+DEL, click YES, there we go. It's forgotten.
If people needed computers to randomly forget things, they wouldn't religiously create daily, hell, even hourly backups and using multi-million storage rooms with carefully adjusted temperature, humidity and so on, to store those backups in.
Computers can be trusted to forget only the day they are smarter and do everything better than a human can. Right now they are tools, which must obey their owner, and the owner decides what goes and what stays.
That's the spirit! You've just got to unsay what you said before, then, when they look up your past, they'll pay more attention to the more recent comments. ;)
Er...hopefully. But I suppose actually meaning the "unsaid" comment might help...
..are great at forgetting! 5 million emails, that's amazing!
I agree there's a downside to this, and people can misuse information, and I don't think all concept of privacy should be abolished, but trying to control the storage of information is probably an unwinnable battle. Educating people on how and when information about them may be stored might be the best we can do. It's an interesting idea, though.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Someone mentioned that we could use nicknames, so yeah, I use a nickname. The trick comes when I try to continually separate my nickname-self from my real-self, in order to protect my privacy. It's hard work!
So, I'm sad that I feel the need to censor what I say on the internet. But what's worse is that I tend to carry that tendency over into real life. I find myself not divulging information about myself to other people, in real-life conversations, because the hesitancy to do so is so ingrained in me now... I've somehow come to a point of thinking that it's not anyone's right or business to know anything about me, unless I'm feeling particularly benevolent. But this is to the detriment of real-life relationships.
Does anyone else experience this issue? Does anyone have useful tips on resolving it?
Doesn't much of this come down to a lack of education? Computers are a part of society that we are incredibly reliant upon and yet we expect users to be either self-taught or trained. Public education fails in computer education (and many other realms). While there will always be the technologically inept who can't program their Tivo or who look at an iPod as a paperweight, these are devices that don't bring about serious consequences for their misuse. As the reliance upon computers has increased, and as the sensitivity of information retained on computer has also increased, the training to go along with handling these responsibilities and technologies has gone almost untouched.
Maybe the answer is thinking before spewing. There was a time when writing a letter was time-consuming enough, and permanent enough, that thought was required before writing. Similar thought might leave us with a legacy that we're more proud of.
Clearly, the way AOL is going to stay afloat is to sell you 'deletion rights' to the logs of your chats they're archiving on their AIM servers ('for analysis purposes') in a few years.
You do use an OTR client, right?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Shouldn't we be worried that computers won't remember enough? Interesting breakdown of an entire era of human history becoming lost because of changing file formats and irrecoverable data here: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industr y/4201645.html?series=21
Let's start by erasing this Harvard professor's comments from the computers!
Accurate data is truth. Inaccurate data can be changed, or at least rebutted. Why forget truth?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
This could probably be implemented easily using Reiser 4 metadata.
/etc, /bin, /lib, /sbin would keep all data forever, /var/tmp would be cleaned after one day, your home directory could forget data when it's not accessed for one year etc.
;)
Simply write a tool that allows to set TTL for FS objects like folders and files and stores it as metadata. Then create a Reiser 4 plug-in that checks the metadata and deletes files that are outdated.
Directories should carry a default TTL value for files put into them. For example
However, I think I prefer having all my data kept until I delete it personally.
This is why I don't blog.
You could implement a ttl-to-limbo variant; plus, you could implement all sorts of features with respect to how you discriminate - must a file be untouched for a year, or is one year after its ctime that you move it to limbo ? In reality, since people aren't very good at micromanaging their files, it's probably better if this feature were 'inherited' from the directory that it's in. Also, it's typically something that programs do instead of users; if I tag a tar with a ttl, then I'll want all files coming out of that tar to have the same ttl, and all the files that are created in that same dir using 'configure' and 'make' also. That way I can have an installation of some package and not worry about it's throwing files around: tomorrow they'll be gone. But if I want to keep them, then all I'd have to do is issue some command, and they'll live on my hard-disk forever. I guy can dream, I suppose..
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Notions of anonymity and being able to "start over" are fairly modern. Historically, a single mistake might follow you for the rest of your life.
But it's not like we have a choice anyway. USENET posts had expiration dates, yet a decade later, DejaNews still puts them up on-line. We may wish that digital information expires, but it doesn't. We might be able to achieve this through totalitarian control over information, but that's worse than the problem it's trying to fix.
Besides, you can always change your name.
I don't know. I think I would prefer to know the truth. That way, if, say, I am deciding whether or not to hire someone, I can bet on the guy without the checkered past instead of the guy with one, rather than betting on whether or not he is now "well-adjusted".
In any case, it's a moot point. We are rapidly approaching the time where there will be no privacy, if we are not already there. Basically if someone wants to spend enough time and money looking at your past, they will find anything there is to find.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
"good doctors" (with the exception of Dr. Who, of course, and maybe Dr. Atomic.)
First, who cares if everything you've done comes back to haunt you? It's called "karma" and people have been dealing with it for thousands of years.
Second, the only people who want their past to be forgotton are politicians and criminals (and I say that as a former criminal myself who doesn't give a damn whether my past is known.)
Third, even if YOUR computer forgets, who says somebody else's won't remember, giving you the disadvantage?
Fourth, who decides what should be forgotten?
Fifth, if you don't want your past comments on the Net, don't put your current comments there.
Sixth, has the "good doctor" ever heard of personal responsibility? Probably not, the concept has been "forgotten" in this society.
Morons.
It seems no matter what stupid notion somebody comes up with, they can get publicity for it.
So what am I not famous?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
If you don't have the balls to stand behind your words, don't say them. Whether it's on the internet or spoken to a friend, live up to what you've said and done in the past, what you are doing now and what you plan to do in the future; that's what having balls, honor and/or integrity is all about. Personally, I think this guy is dead wrong, computers shouldn't forget things; data being forgotten or lost is often times the cause of modern problems (forgot about Vietnam perhaps? Well no wonder we got into Iraq.).
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Disclaimer: I haven't read TFA.
Bad quality optical media can help computers to forget. They don't choose what they forget, but they do as time passes by. I've read so many article about optical media, I'm surprised no one thought about it.