“Do you remember that message you sent me ten years ago?”
You and a childhood friend are sat reminiscing in a crowded lecture, whilst neither of you may remember that snippet of decade old data, nor will any of the others in your vicinity. Yet the internet will. For it remembers, where and when you pressed send.
No this isn’t an Orwellian tale of dystopian decadence, but a window into our society, where we’re very much ignorant of the permeable nature of online security.
In these times of transition, it’s up to you to take your own steps, maybe coining the term “Think before you click”?
Following recently unearthed events, where the very notion of online anonymity and personal metadata has been shaken by recently uncovered digital surveillance initiatives by the NSA (National Security Agency), among others; PRISM which constitutes the mass data mining of digital mediums in the pursuit of rooting out intelligence which could be beneficial to the United States. What’s even more troubling is something closer to home, that the leaks indicate that Sweden’s telecommunications giant Telesonera has itself had a third party role in the transfer of information from the European bloc to the US. This monitoring scheme which has crossed continents, in the name of ‘upholding freedom.’
For then again; Google, Amazon and Facebook all know more about you than you remember yourself.
So how does a company which undoubtebly has more influence on our lives than any other external benefactor operate without us questioning such power? Take Google, a company which handles 85% of our global search queries according to online aggregator Hitwise. Google is a behemoth which has the power to give but also the power to hold and process you past, present and future information. In so holding the keys to open up; your work, your family and your dreams. In retrospect, that private conservation between you and your friend is already common knowledge to everyone else in the lecture, the private spheres public disparates into the public mire
Whilst the human mind is burdened with the notion of forgetting, the internet remembers what we have long forgotten, as each of our clicks ultimately drives the demographic trends of today.
For if we look at the big picture; throughout history we have remembered and forgotten things over the natural cause of time, that which we wished documented was so through oral or pictorial renditions. Remembering became streamlined with the advent of mass distribution of printed media, yet we still forgot. It’s only over the last few decades that we’ve lost the ability to forget and made remembering the default.
Not forgetting creates a totally new playing field, the consequences of which can be seen in the recently unearthed monitoring schemes. For we cannot simply ignore the millenniums of human nature and suddenly face a change which is so fundamental for our thought processes.
In the words of Canadian blogger Cory Doctorow, “we’ve created the perfect memory.“
Do digital memories expire?
Our information holds the key for our present and future. Systematic data which can be assimilated to hold and create a digital profile of our life, so where should this line be drawn? Should we be incriminated due to digital discrepancies?
This raises questions of both a moral and social nature. So should we be defined through our digital footprint throughout lives? Be it through job interviews, medical procedures or judicial matters, your data will become all the more scrutinised in situations which before it not have been, in so deconstructing the very rigors of private life.
Which will in time become ever more poignant as we develop a more profound ‘digital history.’
Digital remembrance has now taken up another guise as Google now offers us to manage our digital testaments through a digital account manager in our Google account settings. In so opening new avenues for how we process and value our digital information from now until perpetuity. Furthering the questions and limits of the long term storage of our lives digital footprints. An issue which will only grow in prevalence as the first internet generation begins to age.
The White knights
Yet there are those who’ve protected our digital rights, such as EFF (Electronic frontier foundation). Since the foundations birth in 1990, their message has been clear ; to uphold the rights we have in society, online, so offering legal help and consulting to those who feel that their digital rights have been broken.
EFF have mapped out websites and how they handle your information and if they actually ask for your explicit permission in doing so. These results invariably makes us question the lack of transparency which our online spheres offer. Punctuating the importance of communication, something which many define as non existent or are ignorant of as anonymity takes over.
“Companies should earn our trust through their transparency” says EFF representative Dave Maass.
Or if we look at recent research by the National Academy of Sciences, marketing companies can measure individual trends and personal traits from our ‘likes’ on Facebook. In so creating pictorial and personal trends for our economic and social behaviour.
Yet Facebook have declined to release a transparency report citing it would “be misleading to users”
The limits of online ambition
Today, our information we place online is susceptible to being judged from them by companies, our information sold to the highest cooperate bidder. Information which has the power to influence our medical, judicial and social future.
Anonymity being a form of digital denial, as every link we click and password we enter leave a digital footprint. Our anonymity is sacrificed in the streamlining of the services which we have come to rely on so heavily?
The more that’s remembered the harder it becomes for it all to be forgotten, as an ever more systematic picture of us and our habits is painted upon the habitual canvas of remembrance.
Acceptance is one form of acknowledging the internet as a functional part of life but fragments of vigilance and knowledge go a long way. Not placing all your digital eggs in one basket, so not using a password chain which is for there is no uniformity in digital memory as each individual benefactor sets the ‘expiration date.’ Ask the question, do I need to store my data here?
Remembering
We may look at these communicative developments and deny their significance, but then again without this form of remembrance, modern society wouldn’t function as it does today, bringing people closer through the flows of information, contact can be established where non existed before. You can converse with someone thousands of miles away without spending huge amounts of time or money doing so. The digital revolution has extended the power of the human penchant for remembering, for good and bad. The power of distributed information has shifted the outlook for millions, offering connectivity and empowerment to the masses. Yet such power doesn’t exist without consequences.
The honeymoon is now over. To surrender your digital liberty has now gone beyond the mere convenience of it. The gap between Orwellian fantasy and reality is ever shrinking, as the question of digital rights shifts from our news feeds to our own lives.
For when they loose our trust, they loose their power.
Notes taken from; Delete, The virtues of forgetting in the digital age, Victor Mayer – Schönberger, Oxford, 2008
EFF Contact: https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013
