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."

Re:And in the spirit of things

I thought the good doctor was Doctor Who...

Re:And in the spirit of things

Retention of data is, for good or bad, something that happens and will continue to happen. That's what Information Technology is about. This phenomenon is not new. Politician have known this for ages, and a journalist can easily dig into the past to find some crusty anecdotes about a politician's twenties. The fact is that nobody cares. Everyone has made stupid thing during their youth, done stupid things in private, and everyone knows that this doesn't matter much.

Here in France we have had photos of Chirac selling a communist newspaper while he was young or our ex-prime minister dancing shirtless at a private party. It didn't matter much.

Re:And in the spirit of things

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

Re:And in the spirit of things

And in the spirit of modern society, the good doctor is (sadly) ignored.

Sure, he may be ignored now. But in 30 years maybe we'll dig up his article again and do something about it....

Hmm

I am really tempted to comment on this, but I'm worried that it will be archived and used against me later.

the whole picture

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 [winstonchurchill.org]

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.

Re:the whole picture

Thankyou, your file has been updated.

Re:the whole picture

> played D&D and cried
> seduce the hottest girl in school

Non-sequitor! Error! Paradox encountered! Cannot reconcile! Daisy... daisy... give me your answer true...

Re:the whole picture

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.

Responsibility

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.

Re:Responsibility

You're absolutely correct. ... I wonder if I can change my earlier comment ...

Re:Responsibility

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.

Unrealistic

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.

Solved

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.

No kidding

I just pulled my credit report [annualcreditreport.com], which I do 3 or 4 times a year. My address at my old air defense outfit at Ft Polk (D 1/55 ADA) is still listed there.

I got out of the army in 1988.

Re:No kidding

Give us a couple of your credit card numbers, you phone number and current address.

We can clear that credit report up for you. ...

Damn, this will come back to haunt me...

Context

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!".

Public databases need to forget

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.

Bit rot will help

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.)

I disagree

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 :-(

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

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

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

Is he married?

"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.)

presidential debate, 2048

"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!"

Love letters and Sherlock Holmes

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."

I disagree

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.

I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing.

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?

Re:But.. dude..

ITYM "That's what NTFS was designed for".

HTH

Polluting the well

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? :)

They do 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.