should be discarded. But, analogous to the world of sanitation, the dividing line
between valuable information and worthless trash is rapidly blurring.
The recordkeeping community is confronted with this new dilemma since the
pervasive recording of data creates unprecedented opportunities in many different
domains like health care, crime fighting and societal convenience in smart
applications.
Data driven phenomena like Big Data, smart cities and the Internet of things are
widely seen as heralds of fundamental societal transformation in a world in which
everyone and everything is always connected via information networks. The
implications of the computational turn go far beyond the instrumental use of ICT.
More fundamental is that the world is increasingly interpreted and explained in
terms of data and information. Dutch philosopher Jos de Mul calls it the
'informatisation of our worldview' (De Mul, 2002, p. 130-134). Luciano Floridi
designates this turn as the fourth revolution (the three preceding were based on the
observations and new paradigms of Copernicus, Darwin and Freud) since human
agency in society is entirely determined by ICT which surrounds us. The effect of this
informational revolution is, like the previous ones, a fundamental rethinking and
repositioning of ourselves into the world (Floridi, 2014, p. 87-94).
The desire to track and monitor nearly everything is not new. States are infamous
collectors of information; it is even a prerequisite to possess enough information to
be able to create a political space. In 1840 the French politician Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon asserted that '[t]o be ruled is to be kept an eye on, inspected, spied on,
regulated, indoctrinated, sermonized, listed and checked off, estimated, appraised,
censured, ordered about. To be ruled is at every operation, transaction,
movement, to be noted, registered, counted, priced, admonished, prevented,
reformed, redressed, corrected' (quoted by Scott, 1998, p. 183). What is new are the
information and communication technologies that 'record, transmit and, above all,
process data, increasingly autonomously' and the effect is a strong belief that by
doing so society will improve (safer and better quality of life) (Floridi, 2015, p. 52).
According to some scholars this makes it viable for governments to record almost
everything what people do or say (Villasenor, 2011). Big Data adherents are
convinced of the value of data per se and they challenge the necessity of managing
information based on the principles of the past. Ralph Losey, an active eDiscovery
lawyer foresees that the traditionalist information-management approach based on
'classification, retention, and destruction of information' will be completely
superseded within five years. In his view, the 'classify and control lock-down
approach of records-management is contrary to the time. Instead of classify and kill,
[it is] the googlesque approach of save and search'.2 According to these data hoarders
the real efforts to be made are directed towards refining methods of identifying
relevant information. Keeping data will become default because as Clay Shirky
stated: the problem is 'not information overload. It's filter failure'.3 The idea of
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keeping all data, however, is not undisputed. Many scholars envision the future of
information overload in terms of getting stuck in a meaningless data swamp.
Jennifer Gabrys sketches the danger of transforming the archives into sites of digital
rubbish because '[t]he transience and even banality that emerge with electronic
storage extends to new levels, where heartbeats and expiring milk acquire a place as
archive-worthy data. In fact, through the monumental task of archiving everything,
the archive becomes more akin to a disorderly waste site, which then requires
processes of computation to make sense of the welter of material and data' (Gabrys,
2011, p. 120).
In this essay, I explore the implications of this fourth revolution for archival
memory functions in society and more specifically to understand what effects these
data-driven phenomena have on the traditional function of appraisal with regard to
accountability. I will argue that the recordkeeping community needs to put more
effort in rethinking and redefining the prevailing archival concepts and archival
functions. I contend that appraisal remains a meaningful activity in this 'age of
zettabyte' (Floridi, 2014, p. 13), but that the perspective of appraisal in twenty-first
century informational practices is no longer confined to reducing the volume of
records but expanded with the question which components of the constructing layer
of the record are required to keep the quality of records as instruments of
accountability.
Radical turbulences
New technologies that generate, store and transmit data, are changing the nature
of the archive. Geoffrey Batchen writes that the 'archive is no longer a matter of
discrete objects (files, books, art works etc) stored and retrieved in specific places
Now it is also a continuous stream of data, without geography or container,
continuously transmitted and therefore without temporal restriction
(Batchen, 1998, p. 49; Batchen, 2001, p. 183). The change is not only related to the
abundance of data. Derrida emphasised the importance of understanding the
implications of technologies of communication and recording for the archive. He
coined the term archivisation to express the pivotal impact of the technical means
and methods on what can be archived: 'the technical structure of the archiving
archive also determines the structure of the archivable content even in its very
coming into existence.' The performative implications of that notion are far-
reaching, since 'archivization produces as much as it records the event' (Derrida,
1998, p. 17; Manoff 2004, p. 12). In his Mal d'archive, which was published in 1995,
Derrida envisaged how for example email will transform the entire public and
private space since '[i]t is not only a technique, in the ordinary and limited sense of
the term: at an unprecedented rhythm, in quasi-instantaneous fashion, this
instrumental possibility of production, of printing, of conservation, and of
destruction of the archive must inevitably be accompanied by juridical and thus
political transformations' (p. 17). The adoption of email in the 1990s is an example
of what Derrida called 'radical and interminable turbulences' (p. 18). New media
transform what can be recorded and archived, and thus what can be used as
evidence. The invention of the camera and phonograph in the nineteenth century
are well known examples of the past. In our time, technologies of Big Data and
Internet of Things cause unprecedented interminable turbulences. In the next
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archives in liquid times
2 https://e-discoveryteam.com/2015/02/08/information-governance-v-search-the-battle-lines-are-
redrawn/?blogsub=confirming#blog_subscription-3 accessed 30 March 2017.
3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LabqeJEOQyI, accessed 30 March 2017. His vision was disputed by
Nicholas Carr, who responded 'It's not information overload. It's filter success' which means that filters
push growing amounts of information that is of immediate interest to us, with the result of increasing
information overload for individuals, available at <http://www.roughtype.com/?p=1464> accessed at 30
March 2017.
charles jeurgens threats of the data-flood. an accountability perspective in
the era of ubiquitous computing.