A World That Never Forgets: 8 Short Case Studies

Jessica Winter’s The Advantages of Amnesia (in the Boston Globe) raises some perplexing questions about a world where memory is drastically cheaper and exponentially more powerful every year, and storage has become pervasive.

Winter writes, “Some thinkers are becoming nervous about the unintended consequences of memory technology. Certainly Google’s enormous reserves of user information, stored in dozens of secretive data centers across the world, and the literally photographic memory of the Internet Archive, which preseves billions of defunct Web pages for posterity, are enough to leave anyone rattled. New forms of memory are permanent and accessible from anywhere. As their reach grows, scholars are asking if now—perhaps for the first time in human history—we need to find ways to forget.”

Case Study 1: Even when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) removed about 8% of the Enron email database that it studied because it contained personal information, such as social security numbers and salary charts, risks to the company still remained. Tens of thousands of Enron emails (4% of all the emails available to study) contained inappropriate materials, including pornography, disparaging racial comments, and offensive jokes that could have led to law suits. Of all the emails studied, 8% included personal content including emails about medications and ailments.

The transformation is, well, transformational: We may need one day in the near-future to expend as much energy and resources forgetting as we used to spend trying to remember. And forgetting, lest we feel badly about all the times we seem to do it, is biological. We were programmed to forget things. The idea that everything is available forever is staggering.

Case Study 2: She graduated Phi Beta Kappa, has published in top legal journals and completed internships at leading institutions in her field. So when the Yale law student interviewed with 16 firms for a job this summer, she was concerned that she had only four call-backs. She was stunned when she had zero offers. Though it is difficult to prove a direct link, the woman thinks she is a victim of a new form of reputation-maligning: online postings with offensive content and personal attacks that can be stored forever and are easily accessible through a Google search.

Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School, argues in support of “data ecology,” where a combination of law and software would post expiration dates on sensitive data. (We can do it for beer, so how much harder can emails be?) Search engines and vendors of all sorts would operate under a legal obligation to wipe data clean after a set time period.

Case Study 3: Some two dozen e-mails sent in the days before the 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle disaster revealed NASA officials were concerned that tile damage sustained during liftoff could endanger the mission -- and the lives of Columbia's crew. “Any more activity today on the tile damage or are people just relegated to crossing their fingers and hoping for the best?" engineer Robert Daugherty wrote on Jan. 28, 2003. The Columbia disintegrated upon reentry over Texas on Feb. 1, killing all seven crew members.

“My solution is not based on perfect technology,” Mayer-Schonberger says. “What I want is for people to think about the life span of the information that surrounds us, to reintroduce into our consciousness the importance of forgetting.” Data ecology would, for example, enable people to use the Internet without leaving a permanent trail of every click.

Case Study 4: “Time to clean up those files,” wrote former CSFB investment banker Frank Quattrone in an e-mail in 2000, when the bank's allocation of initial public offering shares was under regulatory scrutiny. Obstruction-of-justice charges ended in a mistrial, and federal prosecutors agreed to drop them if he doesn't run afoul of the law for a year. He's rumored to be starting his own private equity and advisory firm.

Just his summer Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Ask.com agreed, under pressure, to wipe IP addresses and cookie data after a certain period of time—anywhere from 13 months to two years.

Case Study 6: Anthony Campbell ought to feel relieved. The Rider University dean of students recently was cleared of criminal charges in the drinking death of a freshman, and Campbell's lawyer expects to get all traces of the indictment wiped from the record books. But the Internet has a longer memory — one that's virtually impossible to erase. "Now, people start with a Google search, then do a formal criminal-background search. The former will produce results that the latter won't. And I don't see any way to prevent that," laments Rocco Cipparone Jr., Campbell's attorney.

The Net has enhanced free speech and self-expression for millions. But it's proving a curse for others whose reputations become snarled in a Web of old news stories, nasty blog posts and indiscreet Facebook profiles that never fade away. For fees ranging from $30 to hundreds of thousands of dollars, services such as ReputationDefender, DefendMyName, Naymz and International Reputation Management attempt damage control. They coax Web sites to yank contentious postings, or try to rig search results on Google and Yahoo so disputed links appear less prominently.

Even so, news stories and government records are practically etched in cyberstone. There is no magic digital eraser, experts say. "Nothing you put on the Web is ever definitely gone," says Richard Rosenblatt, former chairman of MySpace. Everything "is indexed by someone, somewhere."

Some experts argue that the real solution will not be technological or legal, but cultural. Younger people growing up in a world of permanent memory will find coping mechanisms.

Others believe that the cost of storing information will fall faster than the cost of analyzing it, making information overload an economic problem that will help balance the risk of permanent memory.

Case Study 7: Is your Facebook profile tame enough that you could show it to your grandmother? Those and other questions are being posed as word spreads that some potential employers (not to mention school administrators) view students’ Facebook profiles. If Facebook and MySpace are meant just for fun and socially connecting with others, why do employers look at them?

If you were about to invest in a company’s stock, would you do background checks to see how the company has performed, who they have in their leadership, and whether they’re a trustworthy investment? You bet you would! Many organizations approach Facebook profiles in the same light. They have an investment to make, and they want to make sure you are worth investing in. Do you demonstrate poor judgment by boasting about engaging in illegal activities (regardless of whether you actually did so)? Are you the type of employee who would hurt the culture or morale by complaining publicly about your boss and co-workers? Could you be depended upon to show up to work?

Whether on Facebook, MySpace, a personal blog, or other internet site, what you write and post is very public. Even if you change the default security settings, a lot of things are still visible and they are always backed up on a server somewhere; even after you delete a picture it still exists somewhere. Many of my colleagues have predicted that during an election campaign in 10 years, pictures and postings will come back to haunt a candidate. And what about your friends’ profiles? Do they have any pictures of you that might damage your reputation? While Facebook and other sites are meant just for fun, they can be dangerous as well.

So, is that old yellow legal pad and Bic pen starting to look better?

Case Study 8: The Microsoft chairman, who's been stung by e-mail several times, got caught yet again discussing schemes against a corporate enemy in e-mail messages admitted as evidence in antitrust testimony last week. In one note to top executives, Gates said he approved of Microsoft's association with the Web Services Interoperability Group (WS-I), code-named "foo," as long as Sun Microsystems was kept on the sidelines. This comes only a month after a January 1999 e-mail surfaced in court in which Gates described a plan to use the Windows operating system to promote Microsoft's audio and video delivery software over that of rival RealNetworks.

OK, that last one is pretty old. And I'm sure he's learned his lesson. But if Bill Gates gets tangled in email traps and web memories, what chance do you and I have?

None. And that old yellow legal pad really is looking better all the time.

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

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