new paper at First Monday

The opening paper from the First Monday Conference is now available!

Tactical Memory: The Politics of Openness in the Construction of Memory
by Sandra Braman
First Monday, volume 11, number 7 (July 2006),
URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_7/braman/index.html

Abstract: Those in the openness movement believe that access to 
information is inherently democratic, and assume the effects of 
openness will all be good from the movement's perspective. But means 
are not ends, nothing is inevitable, and just what will be done with 
openly available information once achieved is rarely specified. One 
implicit goal of the openness movement is to create and sustain 
politically useful memory in situations in which official memory may 
not suffice, but to achieve this, openness is not enough. With the 
transition from a panopticon to a panspectron environment, the 
production of open information not only provides support for 
communities but also contributes to surveillance. Proprietary 
ownership of information is being challenged, but there is erosion of 
ownership in the sense of being confident in what is known. Some 
tactics currently in use need to be re-evaluated to determine their 
actual effects under current circumstances. Successfully achieving 
tactical memory in the 21st century also requires experimentation 
with new types of tactics, including those of technological 
discretion and of scale as a medium. At the most abstract level, the 
key political battle of the 21st century may not be between 
particular political parties or ideologies but, rather, the war 
between mathematics and narrative creativity.