Martin Dodge
The ethics of forgetting in an age of pervasive computing
Biography
Martin Dodge works at University College London as a
researcher in the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis and lecturer in the
Department of Geography. He has a degree in geography and computing, an MSc in
geographical information systems and is currently completing his PhD. His work
has been primarily concerned with developing a new research area of the
geography of cyberspace, focusing in large part on the ways to map and
visualise the Internet and the Web. He is the curator of a web-based Atlas of
Cyberspace (www.cybergeography.org/atlas)
and has co-authored two books, Mapping Cyberspace (Routledge, 2000) and Atlas
of Cyberspace (Addison-Wesley 2001).
Position Paper
In this paper, we examine the potential of pervasive
computing to create widespread sousveillance, that will complement
surveillance, through the development of lifelogs;socio-spatial archives that
document every action, every event, every conversation, and every material
expression of an individual’s life. Examining lifelog projects and artistic
critiques of sousveillance we detail the projected mechanics of life-logging
and explore their potential implications. We suggest, given that lifelogs have the potential to convert exterior generated oligopticons to an interior panopticon, that an ethics of forgetting needs to be developed and built into the development of
life-logging technologies. Rather than seeing forgetting as a weakness or a
fallibility we argue that it is an emancipatory process that will free
pervasive computing from burdensome and pernicious disciplinary effects.
Introduction
“In the course of human (and non human) history, it is rare
enough for a significant new regime of recording the past to develop” (Bowker,
2003, 28). Bowker points to the invention of writing and the printing press as
the only two new regimes of recording the past in the last millennium; we posit
here that pervasive computing and the concept of life-logs are set to become
the third. Pervasive computing, as defined by Galloway (2004, 384-5), “seeks to
embed computers into our everyday lives in such ways as to render them
invisible and allow them to be taken for granted.” A life-log is conceived as a
form of pervasive computing consisting of a unified, digital record of the
totality of an individual’s experiences, captured multi-modally through digital
sensors and stored permanently as a personal multi-media archive. It will
provide a record of the past that includes every action, every event, every
conversation, every material expression of an individual’s life; all events
will be accessible at a future date because a life-log will be a searchable and
recallable archive. Such a life-log will constitute a new, pervasive
socio-spatial archive as inherent in its construction will be a locational
record; it will detail everywhere an individual has been. Such a conception is
fuelled by the roll-out and adoption of technologies that systematically
measure many aspects of social and economic life (e.g., electronic payment,
utility usage, material and information traffic flows, surveillance, etc.), the
recognition that digital storage capacity is growing exponentially at the same
time that cost and physical size is falling, digital sensors are becoming
smaller and more autonomous, and contemporary experiments that seek to
integrate captured data within proto-type life-logging systems is firing
developers’ imaginations (e.g. Johnson, 2003; Schofield, 2004). As such, the
present ability to capture and store vast amounts of information is inspiring a
vision of pervasive computing that generates ubiquitous information of the
present, that is kept to become a continuous record of the past. Such
information constitutes capta (Dodge and Kitchin, 2005). Capta (derived from
the Latin capere, meaning ‘to take’) are units of data that have been selected
and harvested from the sum of all potential data (derived from the Latin dare,
3 meaning ‘to give’) (Jensen, cited in Becker, 1952)1. To date, recording
regimes have generated capta from an ‘exterior’ position generally through
one-dimension and is held by an organisation external to an individual and
which they do not control (e.g. it constitutes surveillance). A life-log will
generate capta from an ‘interior’ (or firstperson) perspective where the
individual watches themselves through intimate technologies (i.e., technologies
in service to the individual—e.g., phones, car, wearable computing) with the
capta pooled into a unified, multi-media archive which they control (e.g., it
constitutes sousveillance). In this paper, we examine the potential shift from
exterior (surveillance) to interior (sousveillance) recording through the
development of pervasive computing, and in particular the notion of
life-logging. In the following section we outline existing forms of exterior
capta and its uses. We then examine the potential of life-logs to perform sophisticated socio-spatial sousveillance and the forms of interior capta it is anticipated they will capture. The fourth section explores the nature of memory
within a life-log and raises ethical questions concerning their use and
development. In the penultimate section we make the case for an ethics of
forgetting and illustrate how such an ethics would be mobilised, before drawing
some conclusions. Our analytical perspective is speculative to a necessary
extent, but drawing on current empirical materials we follow Thrift’s (2004,
583) recent lead in trying “to capture the outlines of a world just coming into
existence, one which is based on continuous calculation at each and every point
along each and every line of movement.”
….lot’s more there see paper sent around by Marc.
Final thoughts
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all of our day,
Are yet a master-light of all of seeing.
(William Wordsworth, Ode:
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, 1807)
In this paper we have described how the multiple exterior
surveillant archives which render peoples lives transparent to outside
organisations, are increasingly being complemented by interior, personal
digital documentation of lives as they unfold. 17 This combination of exterior
surveillance and interior, sousveillant ‘life-logging’ has the power to produce
a society that never forgets; that has a permanent socio-spatial archive of
trillions of events across a vast population, traceable through space and time,
a detailed spatialisation of the history of everything, everywhere. Such an
archive has many potential implications with regards to the regulation of
everyday life, changing the conditions through which life unfolds. To counter
such implications we have suggested the development of an ethics of forgetting
that is materialised through the ‘loss of memory’ in a life-log. While building
fallibility into the system seemingly undermines life-logging, it is the only
way to ensure than humans can forget, can re-work their past, can achieve a
progressive politics based upon debate and negotiation, and can ensure that
totalitarian disciplining does not occur. A fallible life-log, underpinned by
an ethics of forgetting (an ethics that works at both micro [individual—being
able to live with yourself] and macro [collective—being able to live in a
society] scales)6 allows humans to be fallible, to evolve their social
identities, to live with their conscience, to deal with ‘their demons’, to move
on from their past and build new lives, to reconcile their own paradoxes and
contradictions, and to be part of society. Life-logs are unforgiving of
mistakes because of their ubiquitous and merciless memory (Galloway, 2003);
forgetting allows forgiving. Without fallibility life-logs might never happen
because people will oppose their development. In that sense, forgetting may be
an essential ingredient to pervasive computing. 18
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