Escaping the data panopticon

Prof says computers must learn to “forget”

This is not the place for this comment, but this is my place.

I believe that forgetting is an important part of moving on, of being able to compromise in very construtive ways. So I’m pretty sure that this prof’s heart is in the right place.

But I think the issue is much less nuanced. If we have a good and verifiable record of everything all of us do, our public behavior will have to conform to that model. Our lack of information in the past offered countless opportunities for operators to game the system, but if we know who we all are and who everyone else is, all sorts of trusted (and fair) endeavors become possible.

I think much of what the past was built on was a duplicity, and that is going to be impossible going forward. How quickly that’s going to reshape the world is exciting possibiltity today.

Very exciting.

2 thoughts on “Escaping the data panopticon”

  1. Peter, you’ll never get rid of the chicanery…no matter how much info you save or for how long. Last I checked people were still human and as long as that remains true, dirty pool will continue to exist. It will just evolve and morph into a whole new, bigger and better dirty pool.

  2. Aww, you’re right. But our ability to count things and remember them is going to make for big changes in the way our lives are shaped. Maybe our every problem won’t be solved, I did go overboard there, but I do think our ability to trust others (but not all others) will grow, not diminish.

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