🎧 ‘The End of Forgetting’ (Chips with Everything)

6 responses on “🎧 ‘The End of Forgetting’ (Chips with Everything)”

1. Antony Funnell explores the importance of forgetting when it comes to memory. This includes finding balance between the mechanism of memory with forgetting. For example, PTSD is caused when emotional forgetting does not occur. In such situations, we have too many memories we need to let go of. One of the issues is One of the challenges is that fearful/bad memories are often prioritised. “Whiteness does not show up on the page” With this in mind, Alzheimer’s may actually be a lifestyle disease caused when our life is reduced to a small amount of choices where everything is forgotten. In this situation, rather than remembering things, the answer maybe adding more to life that can be forgotten.
   Forgetting is also important on a communal level. Amnesty derives from the word to forget.

   Borrowed from Latin amnēstia, borrowed from Greek amnēstía “forgetfulness, oblivion, deliberate overlooking of past offenses”
   @MerriamWebster https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amnesty

   There are times when we all need to forget, rather than rubbing raw historical wounds. Communal forgetting is public silence on aspects that different people may not agree about. This is something explored by David Rieff.

   David Rieff, an independent writer who has reported on bloody conflicts in Africa, the Balkans, and Central Asia, insists that things are not so simple. He poses hard questions about whether remembrance ever truly has, or indeed ever could, “inoculate” the present against repeating the crimes of the past. He argues that rubbing raw historical wounds—whether self-inflicted or imposed by outside forces—neither remedies injustice nor confers reconciliation. If he is right, then historical memory is not a moral imperative but rather a moral option—sometimes called for, sometimes not. Collective remembrance can be toxic. Sometimes, Rieff concludes, it may be more moral to forget.
   https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300182798/praise-forgetting

   What was interesting was the discussion of importance of having social links to aid with forgetting when it comes to cases of PTSD. This is one of the issues with COVID and lockdowns.
   This discussion also had me thinking about wider discussions associated with memory and remembering. In particular, the place of technology and social media and the right to be forgotten. When it comes to big data, the focus is on remembering everything. What is the place for forgetting in this situation?

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2. Eichhorn’s work is great!
   
   
   
   

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3. This Article was mentioned on brid.gy

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4. This Article was mentioned on brid.gy

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5. Continuing the conversation about forgetting and ethics, Antony Funnell speaks with Kate Eichhorn and Kate Mannell about digital forgetting.
   Eichhorn, the author of The End of Forgetting, discusses the long and complicated history that children have and challenges associated with identity. She explains that our ability to control what is forgotten has been diminished in the age of social media. Although new solutions may allow us to connect, this also creates its own problems and consequences, such as the calcification of polarised politics. Eichhorn would like to say things are going to change, but she argues that there is little incentive for big tech. Although young people are becoming more cynical, there maybe resistance, but little hope for a return to an equitable utopian web.
   Kate Mannell explores the idea of forcing a sense of ethics through the form of a hypocratic oath. Some of the problems with this is that there are many versions of the oath, it does not resolve the systemic problems and it is hard to have an oath of no harm when it is not even clear what harms are actually at play. In the end, it risks being a soft form of self regulation.
   I found Eichhorn’s comments about resistance interesting when thinking about my engagement with the IndieWeb and Domain of One’s Own. I guess sometimes all we have is hope. While Mannell’s point about no harm when it is not even clear what harm is at play reminds me about Zeynep Tufekci’s discussion of shadow profiles, complications of inherited datasets and the challenges of the next machine age. In regards to education, the issue is in regards to artificial intelligence and facial recognition.

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6. What is it about the internet that gives people permission to be awful and mean to others? I follow an astrophysicist on social media. She’s brilliant, and makes great content. She also posted a rant about all the misogynistic comments she gets from men commenting on her rather than her content. I’m not sharing any more details because it looks like she took the video down.

   Source: The Digital Wall by David Truss
   David, I have long wondered about the problem of on and offline. As an educator, are there any strategies or approaches that you have put in place to encourage empathy online, as well as an understanding of the impact of such practices? I recently did a short course on cyber security and awareness, my feeling is that such comments risk forming an informal character reference in a world beyond forgetting.

   I think the future of hacking and cyber attacks is the linking of different datasets that we openly share online through data brokers to provide an insight and awareness of individuals that will open up new possibilities.

   Source: Cyber Security & Awareness – Primary Years (CSER MOOC) by Aaron Davis
   Ironically, looking back through my blog I actually came across a previous post and comment on your blog relating to the difference between our online and offline persona.

   I can see that we are not our online personas. They are different than us. Yet they can say a lot about… but they don’t always say what we think they say.

   Source: Our Online Persona by David Truss

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