CopyRight @ 2004
This is a difficult topic. It is a problem that comes from technology and it is not
clear what the implications, solutions or context in a stable ecology is. It is
Personal Information. The problem comes in many forms, but is basically that unlike in
the past, personal information that could never before be kept track of, can now be
permanently retained and accessed. It represents a loss of privacy and many potential
hazards as well as benefits. In the context of artificial selection, it allows a person
to retain family and personal genetic information to allow for effective artificial
selection. it also allows the easy retention of family and personal history. There are
a number of potential downsides to this as well. Along with the good, comes the bad.
Humans are not perfect. As a matter of fact, they are far from it. This ability to
retain information could mean that mistakes are never forgotten. That seems another
reason for a morality that forgives.
There are other potentials for abuse of this information. If humans create a society
based on love and forgiveness as seems one of our better moral potentials, it may not
become a problem. Looking at the human past though, one must fear the potential for discrimination based on access to knowledge of mistakes made, health conditions, family
or ethnic affiliations, political affiliations, religious affiliations, etc. We have
seen discrimination based on family association as well. Members of a family may be
punished for a crime by another family member. This could potentially relate to any
association or affiliation.
Overall, perhaps in the long run, I do not expect this to be a problem, especially if as I believe, humans use a morality based on cooperation facilitated by love and forgiveness that
is beyond traditional patterns of resource competition. Still, considering where I am now
and what I know of history, I think my concern is natural. Samuel Clemens pointed out that if we woke up one morning all the same, we would have out prejudices in place by noon. I'm more
optimistic than him, but this book is called Transition, not Destination.
Currently, before the information management potentials of computers has barely started, we are trying to craft laws to manage this information problem. Long before this time, the science fiction writers considered the problem. They tend to be pessimistic, so they more often pointed out the problem, than offered solutions. From a technical point of view, the problem is XML.
It is something of a universal computer language. The solution may be to use variations of XML so
that the data cannot be universally analyzed. What one technology can make, another can usually break. There are a few other possible solutions I can think of, but the most important thing is that the problem is recognized. A problem of this is that if a 'State' got dictatorial
control as many science fiction scenarios have proposed and communism tried, the potentials of
information control could make it almost impossible to escape the power of the 'State'. This
has been discussed enough elsewhere, that it is not important to examine it here, but the potential must be recognized and like all risks to freedom, it must be guarded against.
In that context, it seems likely that people may want to work to insure the privacy of their
family and personal records of genetics, history, medical and other information. It may be
that we will keep our family genetic records on memory objects that are not connected to any
but the most secured networks and only when the data is required. Data collecting is just
an expected habit of many private, commercial and public entities.
An interesting aspect of this, is that the secure storage of private personal data could
eventually become a natural function of religions.