Managed Forgetting to Support Information Management and Knowledge Work

Trends like digital transformation even intensify the already overwhelming mass of information knowledge workers face in their daily life. To counter this, we have been investigating knowledge work and information management support measures inspired by human forgetting. In this paper, we give an overview of solutions we have found during the last five years as well as challenges that still need to be tackled. Additionally, we share experiences gained with the prototype of a first forgetful information system used 24/7 in our daily work for the last three years. We also address the untapped potential of more explicated user context as well as features inspired by Memory Inhibition, which is our current focus of research.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, preprint, final version to appear in KI - K\"unstliche Intelligenz, Special Issue: Intentional Forgettin

Memories for Life: A Review of the Science and Technology

This paper discusses scientific, social and technological aspects of memory. Recent developments in our understanding of memory processes and mechanisms, and their digital implementation, have placed the encoding, storage, management and retrieval of information at the forefront of several fields of research. At the same time, the divisions between the biological, physical and the digital worlds seem to be dissolving. Hence opportunities for interdisciplinary research into memory are being created, between the life sciences, social sciences and physical sciences. Such research may benefit from immediate application into information management technology as a testbed. The paper describes one initiative, Memories for Life, as a potential common problem space for the various interested disciplines

‘We do it to keep him alive’: bereaved individuals’ experiences of online suicide memorials and continuing bonds

This paper presents draws on interviews with individuals who have experience of creating, maintaining and utilising Facebook sites in memory of a loved one who has died by suicide. We argue that Facebook enables the deceased to be an on-going active presence in the lives of the bereaved. We highlight the potential of the Internet (and Facebook in particular) as a new and emerging avenue for the continuation of online identities and continuing bonds. Our study offers unique insight into survivors’ experiences of engaging with the virtual presence of their deceased loved one: how mourners come and go online, how this evolves over time and how the online identity of the deceased evolves even after death. We discuss how Facebook provides new ways for people to experience and negotiate death by suicide and to memorialise the deceased, highlighting the positive impact of this for survivors’ mental health. Finally, we describe the creation of tension amongst those who manage their grief in different ways

Generations of meaning : memory, technology and the South African audio archival context

Includes abstract.Like it or not, the past infects the world we live in, the decisions we make, the very choices we see to lie before us. If we ignore its influence, we do not escape its power

Haunted/Haunting Digital Archives of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: Weaving Ghost Stories around the Ongoing Disaster in the Past, Present and Future

This thesis examines the digital archives of the Fukushima nuclear disaster that took place on 11 March, 2011. I propose key thesis questions regarding the roles of the digital archive in articulating the memory and knowledge about the disaster, in relation to its capacity of storytelling. I specifically focus on the production of “ghost stories,” the stories concerning exclusions and invisibilities produced in the digital archive as a flexible, transformative vehicle of ephemeral data. This research draws on interdisciplinary discussions in the fields of media studies, sociology and archival studies, as well as the contributions of feminism and queer theory to delineating the struggles to engage with lost histories and submerged narratives. My contribution is both theoretical and methodological, in developing hauntology as a way of intervening to temporal and narrative modalities of the practices of digital archiving. In formulating hauntological methods, I attend to the creation of “haunted data” and the contingent dis/appearance of digital traces, which have allowed me to employ archival imaginaries to take into account gaps, absences and erasures as a constitutive part of archival storytelling. I also aim to demonstrate a multivalence of haunting at work in the mutual construction of the archive and the archived, with the Fukushima disaster as both haunted and haunting object of inquiry. The digital archives I analyse in the empirical chapters are: two archival repositories on the website of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) that owns the damaged plant; the Japan Disasters Digital Archive (JDA); SimplyInfo.org and Nukewatch.org; Teach311.org. They are “moving” repositories that keep archival objects in motion, and I ask how they articulate and bring together the fragments of the disaster, by intervening to, and generating the intricate web of connections between the past, present and future. Throughout the thesis, I argue that the constant and contingent retelling of the Fukushima disaster in the practices of digital archiving calls attention to narrative possibilities afforded by digital technologies. This research explores how the production of the digital archive entails the conflation of fact and fiction, of multiple temporalities that register different facets of haunting, and myriad regimes of remembering and forgetting, which would shape our understandings of the ongoing disaster with no definitive beginnings and ends

A critical practice-based exploration of interactive panoramas' role in helping to preserve cultural memory

I am enclosing the content of two DVDs which are integral part of the practice-based thesis.The rapid development of digital communication technologies in the 20th and 21st centuries has affected the way researchers look at ways memory – especially cultural memory – can be preserved and enhanced. State-of-the-art communication technologies such as the Internet or immersive environments support participation and interaction and transform memory into ‘prosthetic’ experience, where digital technologies could enable 'implantation' of events that have not actually been experienced. While there is a wealth of research on the preservation of public memory and cultural heritage sites using digital media, more can be explored on how these media can contribute to the cultivation of cultural memory. One of the most interesting phenomena related to this issue is how panoramas, which are immersive and have a well-established tradition in preserving memories, can be enhanced by recent digital technologies and image spaces. The emergence of digital panoramic video cameras and panoramic environments has opened up new opportunities for exploring the role of interactive panoramas not only as a documentary tool for visiting sites but mainly as a more complex technique for telling non-linear interactive narratives through the application of panoramic photography and panoramic videography which, when presented in a wrap-around environment, could enhance recalling. This thesis attempts to explore a way of preserving inspirational environments and memory sites in a way that combines panoramic interactive film and traversing the panoramic environment with viewing the photo-realistic panoramic content rather than computer-generated environment. This research is based on two case studies. The case study of Charles Church in Plymouth represents the topical approach to narrative and focuses on the preservation of the memory of the Blitz in Plymouth and the ruin of Charles Church which stands as a silent reminder of this event. The case study of Charles Causley reflects topographical approach where, through traversing the town of Launceston, viewers learn about Causley’s life and places that provided inspirations for his poems. The thesis explores through practice what can be done and reflects on positive and less positive aspects of preserving cultural memory in these case studies in a critical way. Therefore, the results and recommendations from this thesis can be seen as valuable contribution to the study of intermedia and cultural memory in general

LifeLogging: personal big data

We have recently observed a convergence of technologies to foster the emergence of lifelogging as a mainstream activity. Computer storage has become significantly cheaper, and advancements in sensing technology allows for the efficient sensing of personal activities, locations and the environment. This is best seen in the growing popularity of the quantified self movement, in which life activities are tracked using wearable sensors in the hope of better understanding human performance in a variety of tasks. This review aims to provide a comprehensive summary of lifelogging, to cover its research history, current technologies, and applications. Thus far, most of the lifelogging research has focused predominantly on visual lifelogging in order to capture life details of life activities, hence we maintain this focus in this review. However, we also reflect on the challenges lifelogging poses to an information retrieval scientist. This review is a suitable reference for those seeking a information retrieval scientist’s perspective on lifelogging and the quantified self

Forgotten as data – remembered through information. Social memory institutions in the digital age: the case of the Europeana Initiative

The study of social memory has emerged as a rich field of research closely linked to cultural artefacts, communication media and institutions as carriers of a past that transcends the horizon of the individual’s lifetime. Within this domain of research, the dissertation focuses on memory institutions (libraries, archives, museums) and the shifts they are undergoing as the outcome of digitization and the diffusion of online media. Very little is currently known about the impact that digitality and computation may have on social memory institutions, specifically, and social memory, more generally – an area of study that would benefit from but, so far, has been mostly overlooked by information systems research. The dissertation finds its point of departure in the conceptualization of information as an event that occurs through the interaction between an observer and the observed – an event that cannot be stored as information but merely as data. In this context, memory is conceived as an operation that filters, thus forgets, the singular details of an information event by making it comparable to other events according to abstract classification criteria. Against this backdrop, memory institutions are institutions of forgetting as they select, order and preserve a canon of cultural heritage artefacts. Supported by evidence from a case study on the Europeana initiative (a digitization project of European libraries, archives and museums), the dissertation reveals a fundamental shift in the field of memory institutions. The case study demonstrates the disintegration of 1) the cultural heritage artefact, 2) its standard modes of description and 3) the catalogue as such into a steadily accruing assemblage of data and metadata. Dismembered into bits and bytes, cultural heritage needs to be re-membered through the emulation of recognizable cultural heritage artefacts and momentary renditions of order. In other words, memory institutions forget as binary-based data and remember through computational information