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 198 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 199 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.

Periodiekviewer Koninklijke Vereniging van Archivarissen

Jaarboeken Stichting Archiefpublicaties | 2017 | | pagina 101