Was 2014 a great year? It’s time to take control of your memories

It is in the face of these acts of memory and forgetting that Facebook recently launched a new feature that used predictive algorithm to remind you of what your year looked like. Chances are that you don’t really remember what happened last January, or who said what to whom in the summer. But you can be sure that Facebook remembers. And not only does it remember but it even has the capacity to remember in rank — it will be able to tell you, what, of the many hundred things you posted, was important for you to remember and what you can safely forget. It is worth wondering what happens to information that your devices forget, or shelve into an archive that nobody remembers.

For most of us, the repetitive nature of these snippets, presented with a festive air that ushers in the new year, are mere irritants or objects to be quaintly tolerated. If you are anything like me, the only summary of 2014 that you actually saw was your own, shuddered at the memory of things that should have not been stored, mocked or joked at the silly things that you have done over the year, and even stopped for a moment re-living the memory of something or somebody who made an impact in your life. And then, wisely, you chose not to share with the world what was essentially a personal snippet of your public sharing.

When the feature was first announced, you could choose whether or not you want to remember the year that you have forgotten. But as we kicked into the new year, Facebook transformed from a helpful friend to a nagging aunt and decided to put this summary on the top of our pages, urging us to look at the recap of the year whether we wanted to or not. And for many, this forceful reminder of what they were trying to forget has proven more than just irritating. People who were coping with the death of loved ones were suddenly reminded of their passing, and the horrible absence it creates in their lives. Terrible accidents or tragedies ranging from houses being burnt down to natural acts of disasters were foregrounded. Breakups, fights, despair and grief were all brought up in painful details.

Facebook’s predictive algorithms, like most of the digital world, depend upon different network principles like proximity, attention, sharing, traffic, etc. to figure out what is the most important data about you. The algorithms are not able to discern that just because something received a lot of traffic it is not something that we want to remember. Conversely, they might not also be to tell that life is made out of moments of small joys and loves which might not be public news or not broadcast on large networks. Facebook has already apologised for this “machine error” that caused grief and distress, and let’s hope that they do not forget this apology.

Letting big data archives and predictive algorithms curate and decide what is important and what is not, removing all human affect, desire, empathy, and love from information data sets, is a mistake. And if there is one thing that we want to begin the new year with, it is about taking control of our memories and finding alternatives to not relegate all control to the sapient technologies we live with.

Nishant Shah is a professor of new media and the co-founder of The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore

Email: digitalnative@expressindia.com