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Name: Jean-François
Family Name: BLANCHETTE
Affiliation: Department of Information Studies
Short BIO
I am an Assistant Professor in Department of Information Studies, UCLA. Degrees: B.Sc./M.Sc., Computer Science, Université de Montréal; Ph.D., Social Studies of Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I teach in the area of electronic records management, digital preservation, and social dimensions of computing. I am currently putting the finishing touches on Mathematics for the People, about the relationship between the cryptographers that designed mathematical tools to protect privacy and secure electronic commerce on the Internet, and the legal professionals and regulators that, across the globe, sought to define the evidential value of electronic documents and signatures. The book provides a series of arguments to account for the failure of cryptography’s social projects, and draws the implications of this failure for a legal system soon to be flooded with litigation over electronic documents.
Title of the presentation
The noise in the archive
Abstract
The recent and simultaneous publication of Gordon Bell’s Total Recall and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger’s Delete is putting the spotlight on the imminent demise of oblivion at the hands of digital media. For both authors, digital information is superior to all previous analog forms of remembering “because it lacks the noise problem,” that is, it does not decay with reproduction, multiple uses, or time. For Bell, in contrast to its biological counterpart, “digital memory is objective, disspassionate, prosaic, and unforgivingly accurate.” We have thus entered an age of “perfect remembering” and must either embrace and adapt (Bell) or relearn “one of the most fundamental behavioral mechanism of humankind.” (Mayer-Schönberger). In this presentation, I argue that, far from noiseless, the digital is just as susceptible to interference, static, friction, approximation, and pollution as the analog medias it has absorbed. From software obsolescence to incompatible formats and poor metadata, digital archives partake of forms of noise perhaps even more damaging than those that have afflicted analog archives. “Perfect remembering” is only as threatening as our belief in its perfection.
On-line publications
1. Blanchette, J.-F. & Johnson, D. “Data retention and the panoptic society: The social benefits of forgetfulness”, The Information Society 18(1):1-13 (January/February 2002)
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/blanchette/papers/is.pdf
2. Blanchette, J.-F., “The Digital signature dilemma”, Annals of Telecommunications 61(7-8):903-918.
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/blanchette/papers/annals.pdf
3. Blanchette, J.-F. & Banat-Berger, F., “La « dématérialisation » du livre foncier d'Alsace-Moselle: Archivistique et preuve électronique”, Document Numérique, special issue on "Archivage et pérennisation”, 8(2):63-72.
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