the cloud Government Facebook Google Data Data Brokers stored in a cloud and can never be forgotten. In addition, often this data is generated and governed by private entities. For example, Facebook governs a lot of our social interactions on their platform and keeps data about us, Google gathers everything that people do with its search engine, and Twitter keeps score of all our interactions via Tweets and others trace our love life (OkCupid, Tinder), our communication (Gmail, Twitter, WhatsApp) and our entertainment (Netflix). This data is to some extent owned by these companies, and whereas a long time ago interactions were physical, and no trace was kept, these modern platforms are aimed at gathering as much data as possible of all our interactions, and aimed at retrieval of that data (of all users combined) for purposes such as profit and surveillance. Despite the focus on data, it is only a consumable for the entities that really change our world: algorithms. Algorithms are computer programs that autonomously utilize data in order to do something. This can be sorting names in a database, computing navigation instructions, or also organizing Facebook's news feed. The term algorithm29 stands for any finite procedure/recipe, with well-defined instructions and which is effective in solving a problem. Algorithmization is the phenomenon where increasing numbers of tasks in society are carried out by intelligent algorithms. The field studying and creating such algorithms is AI30 (McCarthy, 2007; Nilsson, 2010) which is seeing a recent explosion of advances, including breakthrough technologies such as reinforcement learning (Wiering and van Otterlo, 2012) and deep learning. AI's core is coming up with intelligent systems that in some way exhibit observable behavior for which some form of intelligence is required. Lately the focus is on adaptive AI, or machine learning (Domingos, 2015), which ranges from baking cookies31 to driving autonomous cars by learning from popular computer games.32 AI is rapidly becoming the driver for innovation (Stone et al., 2016). The transformation into a digital society can thus be characterized by the two interrelating developments: digitalization, which turns once-physical interactions into digital data, and algorithmization, which amounts to increasing analysis and utilization of that data by algorithms. The transformation's impact on archives (and libraries) is potentially huge. When it comes to digitalization, archives (and libraries) are in transformation. Collections are constantly being digitalized to provide wider public access to information, for example through the American project Digital Public Library of America (DPLA33) and the European counterpart Europeana.34 They unlock massive amounts of archival data such as books, photographs and various documents. Initiatives such as the Google Books project are similar in terms of technology, but have different goals. Google Books35 has a long history of battles36 37 38 between a tech giant wanting to unlock all books written by mankind, for everyone, and author organizations that think that Google does not have the right to do that in this way. The ethical issues of access here are severe, since Google may want to push the idea being a universal library but many think this role should not be pursued by a commercial entity. In general, libraries and archives (to some extent) have always struggled with their exact role, especially in the transformation to our digital age, with the novel aspects of born-digital records and books, and with the loss of being an information providing monopolist (Licklider, 1965; Herring, 2014, see also Anderson, 2011, p. 212) in the age of Google. Both Kallberg (2012) and Clement (2013) have investigated how the archival profession changes in our digital age, and how archivists think about that transformation. Paulus (2011) shows that the lifecycle of information of archives and libraries changes, and that, for example, a transformation is happening in which libraries may return to an ancient and medieval model of the library or archive as a site of both production and preservation. Cox (2007): "At last, archives have a real opportunity to abandon the role of gatekeeper and invite user participation, interaction, and knowledge- sharing." He continues: "What would happen if we could engage our users in defining and describing archival content and in communicating it to others? Is it possible that the analog archives tradition can learn from the movement of social media and social design? Some of the opportunities include diminishing the role of the archivist as gatekeeper, promoting participation and collaboration among users, and enriching the archives itself by tapping into the specialized and diverse knowledge of researchers". The future of archives and libraries has many parallels with the development of information technology such as the internet. Noh (2015) describes several stages leading up to "library 4.0", which is where "technology will become one with users' lives" and which also features 3D printing, big data, cloud computing and augmented reality. One can also digitalize interactions that were purely physical until very recently, for example using photocopiers39 and (personal) cameras (Cox, 2007). archives in liquid times 272 martijn van otterlo from intended archivists to intentional algivists. ethical codes for humans and machines in the archives 29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm 30 Science, special issue on how A.I. is transforming science http://science.sciencemag.org/content/3 57/6346/ 31 http://www.wired.co.uk/article/google-vizier-black-box-optimisation-machine-learning-cookies 32 https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602317/self-driving-cars-can-learn-a-lot-by-playing-grand-theft- auto/ 33 http://dp.la 34 http://www.europeana.eu 35 http://books.google.com 36 https://www.wired.com/2017/04/how-google-book-search-got-lost/ 37 https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-tragedy-of-google-books/523320/ 38 See https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/10/fair-use-transformative-leval-google- books/411058/ and https://www.wired.com/2017/04/how-google-book-search-got-lost/ 39 This also connects back to Eco's "restrictions" described earlier on being able to photocopy in a hostile library, but also to the ethical challenges concerning fairness when photocopying costs money. 273

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Jaarboeken Stichting Archiefpublicaties | 2017 | | pagina 138