Collective remembering and the importance of forgetting: a ...

Collective remembering and the importance of

forgetting: a critical design challenge

Anne Galloway
Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology
Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive

Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6 CANADA
[email protected]

ABSTRACT than all men have had since the world
was a world. And again: My dreams
This paper takes the position that, if the goal are like your vigils. And again, toward
is to better understand designing for dawn: My memory, sir, is like a
collective remembering, we cannot afford to garbage disposal.” He dedicates
overlook the importance of forgetting. himself to classifying and simplifying
Memories are understood as relations of the vastness of what he perceives, all the
power through which we, as individuals and while understanding it would
groups, actively negotiate and decide what necessarily be an incomplete project.
can be recollected and what can be The narrator, however, suggests that
forgotten. And without being able to decide Ireneo Funes is actually incapable of
what we can remember and forget, we are thought as “To think is to forget a
effectively left without hope of becoming difference, to generalize, to abstract. In
different people or creating different worlds. the overly replete world of Funes there
Furthermore, these choices and decision- were nothing but details, almost
making processes not only relate to content- contiguous details.” There were so many
generation or what data gets remembered details, in fact, that Funes eventually
(stored, displayed, etc.) in any given dies of congestion and the story ends.
application, but they are always already
embedded in our research and design Since I have serious reservations about
cultures and practices. Ultimately, this the narrator’s definition of thought, it is
paper argues for creating and supporting a bit ironic that I find myself more
assemblies for deciding collective actions on interested in the moral of this story than
collective matters-of-concern. in its details, but the idea that there is
such as thing as too much memory, that
INTRODUCTION TO REMEMBERING we need to forget in order to live, is too
important to ignore. First, it gives me a
AND FORGETTING MACHINES place to start imagining how much is too
much, when and where it is too much,
There is an oft-cited Jorge Luis Borges for whom it is too much, and so on. I
story called Funes, the Memorious [1] in can also begin to think about what we
which we learn of a man with infallible traditionally choose for our collective
perception and memory. Ireneo Funes memories, how they differ from
had lived a dream-like life in which “he individual memories, and who decides.
looked without seeing, heard without I can wonder about the things we forget
hearing, forgot everything - almost because we want to, and the things we
everything” until the day he fell from a forget because we need to. Ultimately,
horse and gained these remarkable and for the purposes of this paper, I can
abilities. Since his accident, Funes saw ask about the practices and ethics of
and heard everything, forgot nothing, remembering and forgetting and how
and ended up spending all his time
remembering these details. He said: “I
have more memories in myself alone

they relate to the design and use of new -2-
technologies.
specifically on the work of Friedrich
But let me back up a bit before I Nietzsche, Paul Ricoeur and Marc Augé.
continue. In 2003, after attending and
participating in several design Generally-speaking, if a computer
workshops and research conferences in system is programmed to capture and
pervasive computing, I became process data, then it is considered a
concerned that we might actually failure of the system if these data
succeed in creating such ubiquitous become corrupted, irretrievable or
machines of merciless memory. In our otherwise forgotten. Similarly, it is
desire for capturing individual considered a failure of the legal system if
preferences and collective stories, I an honest person is sent to prison
wondered what we would do if certain because of missing or false recollections
words or events were not allowed to by witnesses. But in Memory, History
pass? How would we, how could we, and Forgetting, Ricoeur approaches the
actually face the present, the future, question of memory and truth in terms
ourselves and each other without the of capacity rather than deficiency: “that
imprecision of human social-cultural man is capable of making memory and
memory? I questioned if we were of making history” and that forgetting is
confusing what sensors and databases necessarily a part of remembering.
remember with what we normally call Accordingly he continues the theme of
our personal and collective memories. I (re)presenting the absent by claiming
inquired into the differences between the “politics of a just memory” as one of
dementia (as forced forgetfulness), his civic themes [3]. Ricoeur further
nostalgia (as voluntary forgetfulness) distinguishes between singular memory
and hope (as necessary forgetfulness). as an aiming (visée) and collective
And I wondered what a forgetting remembrances as souvenirs, and the
machine might do differently from these relations between the two certainly
memory machines we were building at merit further study.
some speed and with little critical
reflection. In any case, what emerges as most
important in his work is the recognition
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF that memory “has to do with the
privilege given spontaneously to events
FORGETTING among all the ‘things’ we remember.” In
other words, both memory and
As so many have pointed out, the forgetting are subject to power, and thus
question of memory has fascinated also subject to abuse. This scenario is
Western intellectuals since the times of further compounded by the
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. In Greek inextricability of identity from memory,
philosophy, for example, memory is and Ricoeur asks the simple but
often connected to discussions on profound question “What does it really
making the absent present, and the role mean to remain oneself throughout
of imagination in such endeavours. time?” For my purposes here, I will add
More recent research has focussed on “What does it really mean if the
remembering and forgetting as socially memories held by our machines never
constituted activities [2] and the current change or get forgotten?”
literature on memory and forgetting in
the social sciences and humanities is Take, for example, how selective or
vast. This paper necessarily discusses instrumentalised memory relies on
only a fraction of this whole and focuses selective and instrumentalised
forgetting. Or how, when either

memory or forgetfulness are forced, they -3-
become authorised histories, truthful in
ways that are actually improbable or memory itself ... Memories are crafted
impossible. In mandating official by oblivion as the outlines of the shore
histories – or even more informal are created by the sea ... Oblivion is the
collective memories – we are made to life force of memory and remembrance
remember and so, Ricoeur argues, is its product.” And, again, it is in this
memory has more to do with duty than practice of forgetting that we may find
with justice. But what of our hope [6].
simultaneous duty to forget and forgive?
What sort of justice can we have without So where does all this thinking about
forgetting? What sort of hope can we forgetting and hope lead us?
have if we forget nothing?
Foremost, I have presented design
In his discussion of the abuses of history researchers a problem of scale and
in On the Genealogy of Morals, action-ability. Sorin Antohi, in an
Nietzsche [4] describes what he calls interview with Ricoeur [7], questions
“active forgetting” and also reminds us qualitative differences between scales of
that forgetting is not simply a failure of memory and what is gained and lost in
memory: our movements between them. For
example, if the grand-scale challenge is
"Forgetting is not simply a kind of deciding what gets remembered and
inertia, as superficial minds tend to what gets forgotten, we find at the
believe, but rather the active faculty to ... micro-scale, the scale of the everyday,
provide some silence, a 'clean slate' for our individual and collective decision-
the unconscious, to make place for the making processes within overlapping
new... those are the uses for what I have projects or enterprises. Antohi also
called an active forgetting..." discusses how difficult it is to transpose
value judgments from one scale to
More specifically, for Nietzsche the another, and we are reminded that our
purpose of ‘active forgetting’ is to processes and practices are also subject
wilfully forget the past in order to to individual and social ethics. The
overcome our traumas and transform resulting research and design challenge
our hauntings. Not dissimilar to is rooted in our necessary
Ricoeur, Nietzsche treats forgetting as a accountability: can we find ways of
kind of affirmation rather than as a designing for collective remembering
denial. In this way, forgetting becomes that vitalise the idea that we must be
necessary for our happiness and for able to forget in order to hope?
imagining our possible futures. Put
otherwise, the value of forgetting is its DESIGNING FOR COLLECTIVE
ability to interrupt time or escape
temporal continuity, and thus REMEMBERING & FORGETTING
(re)imagine human experience.
Rather than coding memory machines
Following both Nietzsche and Ricoeur, and forgetting machines as either good
Marc Augé [5] continues this notion of or bad, risky or safe, we can explore
forgetting as “rebeginning” or finding what kind of hope is present in any
the future by forgetting the past. “The given design process/product. I believe
definition of oblivion as loss of that the first course of action is to ensure
remembrance takes on another meaning that a social ethics is fully integrated
as soon as one perceives it as a part of into research and design processes at
the level of daily operations in both
educational and professional contexts.
Instead of focussing only on individual

human conduct and professional ethics, -4-

Richard Devon [8] argues that criteria for project/product quality and
how to “design for values amidst
engineering students would greatly complex factors including pre-existing
bias”. Ultimately, their methodologies
benefit from an understanding of how rely on being able to “discover” universal
and local values, “identify” value-
taken-for-granted practices like project conflicts, and then iteratively
“implement and prototype” new designs
management comprise social and “verify” them against the relevant
project values.
arrangements with their own politics
But for the purpose of this paper I am
and ethics. If people and technologies most concerned with what gets
remembered and what gets forgotten.
are indeed mutually constituted, then These decision-making processes come
into play as soon as a project starts to
practitioners must account for, and be take shape, and we need to engage the
very things that resist or elude our
accountable to, their everyday decisions discovery, our identification, our
implementation, prototyping and our
and actions. verification. As Isabelle Stengers [11]
states:
Following Latour’s actor-network theory
[9], an actant (the process/product at “My dreams and hopes are turned
towards any process which would get
hand) must be made relevant to others, people interested in the consequences
be made indispensable to others and be coming together and being able to
granted consent by others. These impose their questions, objections,
counter-propositions. I do not ask that
(inter)actions are implicated in decision- scientists as people become better or
making processes at multiple scales, more enlightened, I ask that practices
from those of individual research and stop ignoring each other, stop creating
design teams to those of organisations practitioners judging away what escapes
their question.”
and nation-states.
In closing, and as I have suggested
If we apply this kind of thinking to our before [12], we need to shift from
question of designing for collective focussing on matters-of-fact to matters-
of-concern that bring us together not
remembering and forgetting, we need to because we have the same opinions or
begin, rather than end, with universal answers, but because we have shared
calls such as “do no harm”. We also concerns and questions. It is in these
need to focus on local knowledge not “assemblies” or “parliaments-of-things”
[13] that we can achieve a critical
just in terms of function- or content- convergence of difference in which
generation for our applications, but also design takes into account and is
in terms of our overall programme accountable to things that appear
irrelevant or contrary to its traditional
generation. interests and assumptions.

In other words, how does a programme

or project actually unfold? At which
points and with which means are
different people engaged in decision-

making? What does this allow them to
do? What kind of change can they
affect? What hope of a better world,
better day, better moment does it

present? And how do we decide what
constitutes a better life?

Flanagan et al. [10] discuss a growing
focus in human-computer interaction on
how to incorporate “values” into the

design process, or more specifically, how
to get designers to include values as

REFERENCES -5-

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