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

I'm with the prof on this one ...

[LoudMusic]

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22940&ci d=2467504

So how about it, Slashdot, lets start deleting old database entries. ;)

presidential debate, 2048

[circletimessquare]

"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!"

Re:the whole picture

[delire]

Thankyou, your file has been updated.

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.

Re:the whole picture

[psymastr]

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). And from now on you're the guy that bragged about it on slashdot. That's the saddest of them all.