The Information We Trust: A capacity to filter

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Changing Notions of Trust in the Document

By Matthew Young Eidson

Paper to be Presented August 15, 2003

At the 2003 Annual Meeting of the Document Academy

An International Conference on Document Research and Development in Sciences, Art and Business

*Matthew Young Eidson, MLIS, is an Appraisal Archivist at the Life Cycle Management Division of the National Archives and Records Administration, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001. He is a recent graduate from the Archives Program at the University of Pittsburgh. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of any agency of the U.S. government.

Possibly, the first time you noticed computer culture related idioms like the word digital was somewhere around the same time that cheap wrist-watches became such a common commodity that you routinely replaced them as soon as the wristband broke. Digital watches were perhaps one of the first common ways children of my generation recall being exposed to the concept of things being digital. It crept its way into everyday culture so much so that recalling a time without the term becomes difficult. Digital watches were for some time a persistent fad. They were a more humble, simpler, cheaper, more reliable timepiece than its expensive distant relative, the spring driven windup wristwatch. The new digital watch was a slap in the face to the status symbol of centuries of fine micro-craftsmanship; a skill only learned by years of steady apprenticeship. Now, they are a thing of the past. In the early 1980s to our parents getting a digital watch from a McDonald’s Happy Meal was more like a crime than a gift.

Winding a watch in the morning during the fist few waking minutes of a typical day was a tradition in my household, passed down with the wristwatches through generations. Even as a child of the early 1980s we were winding and setting Mickey’s long and short hands according to the official timepiece of the family found centrally on the living room mantel (another windup device made with cogs and springs yet somehow more trusted). Digital watches were not only a time telling device but also a time saving device.

It is at this juncture I should point out that the concept of digital has grown synonymous with our notions of micro-technology in computer aided devices and with the idea of “saving time” in general. The digital wristwatch illustrates a divergence from other technology. While it is meant to mimic older technology it improves on it in a completely different way. However, the digital culture was not completely embraced so rapidly. At least, not with my grandfather who routinely distrusted the digital watch’s ability to keep accurate time. The concept of being digital has completely changed our notions of landscape and boundaries of time and space so much so, that ideas of what would be considered technology in the past are all but unrecognizable as such in the present. In this sense, it isn’t that this new representation of technology is the first age of technology or even the first age of information; as a matter of fact there have been many ages of technology and of information. The main difference is that this is the first instance of this new, representation of digital technology and thus the creation of a digital culture surrounded by that technology.[1]

The definitions of being digital have been changing just as rapidly as digital watches came to our wrists. Presently, the notion of being digital means something completely different than when it was first introduced. So much as the digital wrist-watch has been useful in describing the concept of becoming digital it has also served to illuminate the idea of trust or in this representation, distrust in the digital environment. Still, the situation is not as simple as describing a postwar generation’s aversion to new technology on the eve of uncertainty and fear in a new, possibly unstable way of doing things.[2] It is more revealing now that we are grounded in the digital age that society’s notions of trust have been changing and the most change has come about within this new digital culture.

Trust: A Blind Spot in the Eye of Philosophy

Trust has been a major blind spot in regard to forms of analytical philosophy. There have been many attempts, somewhat in vain, to describe various methodological uses for truth seeking but for the most part they have failed to include the reality of the human experience.[3] For example, computer scientists building truth statements based on systematic calculations in order to verify logical algorithms associated with computer programming become a useful term in their overall effort to authenticate. They miss the bigger picture of the problems associated when using a term like truth. It is a completely human concept to describe the work of a computer in a non-human way. Nor can trust be described or defined antiquely by traditional or rational notions of the state of mind. Study in the notion of trust has to incorporate human complexities and irrationalities and therefore as many philosophers have described it will further develop the notion of self and of the individual.

Trust represents a meeting point of many disciplines. Philosophy, psychology epistemology, historiography, ethics, civics, religious studies and even technology related fields all have invested time and interest in the study of the concept of trust. These different disciplines represent different players in the overall perspectives of trust. They overlap and meet somewhere in their relationship to how various aspects of how trust enters the overall human system. Any minor examination of trust, like this one, requires covering several points of view over a vast amount of time which further complicates getting to the goal of seeking how notions of trust has been changing over time. Basically, looking into the concept must take into account different people living at various points of time, from different perspectives, coming from different environments.

A Futile Attempt

Most attempts to define trust are flawed from the beginning because the word has a different meaning according to one’s perspective and the application and use of trust. The word and concept can only be understood within the context of its use. It is more possible to understand the concept from the conditions of its application rather than using a blanket approach to defining trust for one and every situation. Still, given these circumstances there is a need to somewhat define the parameters of truth in this paper. One way is to look at two human approaches to truth; rationality and goodwill. The first principle of trust is the “rational” approach. It is a calculation of risk involving uncertain factors and uncertain probability; to have trust is to earn trust.[4] In one individual’s interactions trust is not inherently present until it is rightly deserved. So in this respect trust is not a given, it is not unconditional and it has to be developed only through tests, trails and only over time can it be gained. The other principle of trust is the “goodwill” approach, when an individual innately and without bias attempts to trust a statement or another individual because there are no known reasons or factors to suggest distrust. That is, to trust before distrust without any preconceived judgment. The human condition in adulthood seems to operate based more on the goodwill principle of trust. It is a blind factor approach to trust rather than rational steps taken to determine overall trustworthiness. In this respect trust is maintained as an individual positive quality in the overall aspects of human relations. While this quality may be true for adults, at a young age we are taught that belief, another related concept in defining trust should be based on sufficient and sound evidence.[5] For example, a child will not trust a parent’s warning that the top of the stove is hot and maybe harmful. Only until the child individually tests the evidence on their own will the statement become truth. It may be that this type of trust is consequential in that it represents a learned process of checks and balances. From this one simplified example we get many additional complicated factors such as defining the role of belief, the issue of evidence as well as learned behavior and its relationship to the notion of trust.

Traditional representations of trust fit into a variety of categories. Individuals trust governments and leaders with the management of populations and political matters. Public lands, nature preserves and monetary funds are commonly referred to as trusts. Professionals, such as doctors and engineers are given a certain amount of inherent trust to the knowledge of their work. In a legal setting much of trail litigation is determined by a jury’s ability to define how trusted resources of the information really are. Witnesses are sworn to be truthful based on a testimony of truth surrounding their memory of a given event or circumstance. Trust in individual memory has been a rapidly changing notion with the advent of the written culture verses an oral based culture.

Published versus Posted

Perhaps the biggest issue to hit the academic world with the advent of the internet was itself trust. In every freshman seminar, in every college classroom a firm but fair warning was given to students, “Do not believe everything you read off of the internet!” This meant that if you rely on the internet as your only tool for resource discovery your information will be seriously flawed. Not only would your work become susceptible to questions of sound methods of research but to infringement and plagiarism. This suggests that there was an innate problem with belief in posted information on the internet and with a student’s uncanny ability to find information and use it to some degree without legitimacy or concern for authenticity. The problem was accentuated because the internet gave the freedom for anyone with the time to keystroke his or her idea about any given topic with the knowledge of how to get it on the internet could post literally anything. Posting had become equal to publishing and aside from the academic community who had been accustomed to questioning traditional published resources; anything that was posted could be true. This was so much problematic that blanket policies on academic integrity seriously limited the use of internet citations. Even then, there was no sufficient way to corroborate web resources given the small amount of time professors and students had to dispute cited internet claims. So, on the one hand the internet democratically reopened the ability for anyone with a computer at hand to post information, while at the same time seriously limiting its use and authenticity in the academic universe.

The Information We Trust: A Talent for Filtering

As soon as the internet was accepted for more than a passing fad it would become necessary to deal with the issue of trust. A criterion was needed to evaluate the integrity of information found on the web. In some respects the criteria is still being developed but to a larger degree reliance on the “blind faith” approach to information on the internet has declined. The library community has taken an active role in educating their users by teaching methods of evaluating how to trust information they find on the internet. At the core of many of these outreach programs are schemes for approaching quality of information and trustworthiness of the resource providing the information. A generic criteria used to evaluate the quality of information on the internet includes a resource that states their own criteria for the inclusion of information, compares the authority of author or creator, compares the information with related sources, and determines the information’s ability to stand the test of time information. Most resources should easily identify author or provider of the information along with some type of date reflecting its currency to related information and also dates in which the information found was updated or changed. Stability in information is quite a task in the present state of the internet. If a user is going to rely on a particular piece of information and use it as a citation one particular question to ask is, if the document will physically remain in the space it was found. Standard format creates and ease of use for others attempting to access the information.[6] These factors contribute to the quality of information found on any given website.

One particular way to survey the trustworthiness of information found on the internet has been identified by archivists. Records and documents in traditional paper sense in the care of archives have been through a natural process of verifying their authenticity and identifying their chain of custody. This principle is often referred to as provenance. Provenance refers to the maintenance of the records based on the original creation of the record. Archives respect provenance by keeping the original order of records found, maintaining its integrity and not intermingling the records with other records. Provenance suggests that there is an original structure to the creation of records. That structure must be maintained.

In the environment of the electronic record the issue between what is official and what is merely a copy is a difficult one to maneuver around.[7] Archivists have suggested that the design of digital records is that they are not conceptually designed as records at all. Information changes and is updated dynamically; users and creators update or revise the document; filters pull information from databases and other resources to create a record on the fly. With all these mechanisms for efficiency and information storage there isn’t a point at which one can say “here is the record” at any given time. Archivists have called on a redesign of electronic documents and recordkeeping systems to pull from traditional documents the circumstance that make them actual records. Among the most important qualities of a “real” record are structure, context and content. Without these three qualities working together records loose their “recordness.” They no longer are records themselves but information parading around as if it were a real record.[8] Records are also unique. They are created with a given transaction and authority or warrant for their creation.

This discussion about the nature of records relates to trust in another completely different way. Within the tenants of democracy and government is the notion that records are to be retained. This retention keeps government accountable to its citizens at any given point in time. For example, this is evident in the vision of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration:

It is a public trust on which our democracy depends. It enables people to inspect for themselves the record of what government has done. It enables officials and agencies to review their actions and helps citizens hold them accountable. It ensures continuing access to essential evidence that documents the rights of American citizens; the actions of federal officials; and the national experience.[9]

In this respect, records are kept because they contain evidence of the government’s actions and accountability. For example, common records found in county court houses have historically been retained and used overtime. No one would envision a time when a marriage license created in the last decade would be disposed of. The notion of filing court document is in itself a suggestion of some kind of permanence. The digital environment has created the ability to make access to these records more available and efficient. In one such county court, Hamilton County in Cincinnati, Ohio, Jim Cissell, court clerk is aggressively putting his court’s records up online with the auspicious goal of making the records more available and more efficient to government. Unfortunately, this also creates the opportunity for a malicious use of private information. For example, a simple parking ticket contains every amount of individual information a person could use to steal an identity.[10]

This is relatively a new phenomenon within government. In this respect, citizens expect and trust that government will protect their information. On one side there is an attempt to streamline bureaucracy and make greater access to public information and on the other side information that has always been public is now more available for malicious use. It isn’t that in the past this information was not available to whoever wanted a copy of it but that now with the digital culture, the ease of use has created the opportunity for violations of private information.

Trust Management on the Internet: The Art of Negotiation

Social interaction is a negotiation of identities between people in a given environment. -- Danah Boyd[11]

The internet has caused a need to reevaluate the traditional notions of trust. The landscape of the digital environment extends far beyond the networked paths and nodes into the homes of individuals, families, business and even communities. This network has changed the human perception of the physical world. The internet has provided a space to replicate and improve on all aspects of human life. It isn’t that this is currently being designed or thought up as a new trend for the internet. It isn’t that we are on the road to replicating human life on the internet; we are already there. From medicine, politics, finance, education and the workplace to street corners, shopping malls, prisons and museums the internet has been translating services that virtually mimic these human pursuits and physical places.

William J. Mitchell has called this environment a redefinition of a city in his book City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn.[12] Though this networked infrastructure may seem chaotic and loosely connected but there is a design in the architecture of it. Mitchell sees this architecture being built on the human system: “Architects of the twenty-first century will still shape, arrange, and connect spaces (both real and virtual) to satisfy human needs. They will still care about the qualities of visual and ambient environments. They will still seek commodity, firmness, and delight. But commodity will be as much a matter of software functions and interface design as it is of floor plans and construction materials.”[13] This place, this digital environment, as it exists now should to be studied and identified as a representation or a manifestation of the human system. How has this system been changed or left to remain the same? The ramifications of such research would improve the internet.

Trust in Identity and Social Interaction

The network has also created opportunity for deception, capitalizing on highly developed human concepts that have not been extended to the internet. Identity is one of the primary obstacles that people interacting on the network face. Trust, when portrayed in the representation in a face-to-face interaction is measured by a study of the face and of non-verbal communication. This convention gives individuals a perception. It is a social construction. Visual signs such as age, gender and race give contextual clues to the conversation. It provides meaning and clarity to the interpretation of the information being exchanged. Still, there are other pointers that can be taken from simply looking at a person in physical conversation. These are beyond simply using age, gender and race to identify a perception about a person.

Another human concept used to evaluate trust in conversation is reading the face. The face along with body language is an information document itself. The expression “using a poker face” comes to mind when talking about this. Reading a face lends evidence to personality and an individual’s character. Social traits such as sincerity, intelligence, trustworthiness and compassion are believed to be portrayed in one’s face. As Judith Donath, a researcher in visual representation on the internet has explained: “Our impression of being able to read character in faces is strong; our ability to do so is weak.”[14] However flawed the concept may be it is a social construction imbedded in human interaction. Conversational exchange in a physical space occurs in a particular setting, with a given amount of information about the circumstance. So there is also contextual information beyond the physical body to the conversation.[15]

Conversation on the network is much different. It is linear and so far, text based. This is partially due to the adaptation of a human system of writing articulated in the implementation of the internet. Text interface expressed in email, newsgroups, bulletin boards, and chat-rooms established the first virtual places. The Well, (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) conceived in 1984 was one of the first “virtual villages” providing a forum for a community offering online interface. The founders started The Well as an “uninhibited intellectual gathering” between independent writers and readers of a publication Whole Earth Review.[16] Forums or rooms like The Well allowed participation by members though chatting and posting. The first multi-user chat system was developed in 1988. IRC (Internet Relay Chat) gave users simultaneous, synchronous online communication. Rules and structure were quickly adapted out of necessity as a stream of scrolling linear text accumulated in one’s window. In chatting a user chooses a handle and types a short message. While waiting for a response, one could listen (or read) other streams of conversation. Mitchell calls this a “Geographically distributed, highly stylized, cocktail party with electronically masked participants and a mouse in your hand instead of a drink.”[17] These text based chat systems sequentially display typed messages on computer windows. There are two types of information being presented, physical presence data and message content data. In these systems physical presence is only known with conversation. So, participation is based on ongoing conversation and silence doesn’t really mean anything. Researchers have suggested that there are actually two lines of dialog being conducted by any two individuals. One participant reads and responds to previous text while the other ads to or beings a new stream of dialog.[18]

In this text environment the archive of a typical chat log is divorced from the goings and comings of individuals, pauses and breaks as well as turn takings in conversation. The nature of the discussion and the context of dialog are completely lost. Chat logs read as if they were unedited transcripts of speech. The Social Media Group at the MIT Laboratory, Cambridge Massachusetts is developing software that visualizes conversation by offering participants a distinctive conversational interface. Activity in a chat room is recorded and organized by the unique patterns as they occur. Patterns in content and linkages between the participants are recorded for future research in the design of new systems of chat rooms. Participants in ChatCircles2 move themselves around the room (or window) by clicking and dragging a colored dot across the screen in order to find others to chat with. Every user has a hearing range. They are only able to have a conversation with other users around them in their visual range within the room.[19]

The ability to visualize conversation on the internet may indeed help with organizing and studying how the digital culture on the internet has been fostered and developed. Chatting is a popular pastime of internet usage. It enables loosely related communities to remain in constant communication with each other. It is robust, in that it is evasive and permissive enough to conduct conversation among other tasks being completed on one’s computer. The business community has realized the benefit of conversational chat in IM (instant messaging). Simple one sentenced email messages are continuing to clog-up servers containing the routine backups of business data. Email discussions back and forth are time consuming and unnecessary when the person wishing to communicate is only a few feet away. IM allows for the normal conduct of business tractions among employees to occur while work continues. The use of IM cuts down on simple email traffic and prevents a work stoppage by having to open an email, read and respond to it. The use of IM in businesses and in community infrastructure has become a standard way to communicate. In the overall current conditions on the internet many users are quite aware of the problem of identity among users. With the use of web cams and voice in chat as a verification tool, the ability to masquerade as someone other than one’s true self is seriously limited. Identity deception has become a given circumstance in chat rooms.

Figuring Out Who is Real

There are some individuals that further complicate the matter of truth in chat rooms. They are interactive agents designed with complex programs to make them seem real in chat rooms. Also known as chatter bots, these agents (much like many of their human counterparts) have an agenda to their interactivity. They were designed to do everything from information delivery with up to date stock quotes, weather, to educating the public, or offering fashion advice or by selling a particular product. The first design of interactive agents was not supposed to trick chat users into believing they were real instead they were pursued as new ways to deliver advertisements to pitch a product online. The designers found that the people would not use them for their intended purpose of information discovery or for finding products through advertisement but instead they spent the majority of their time in idle conversation with the agent. The bots were redesigned with these qualities in mind and sent out as social agents to see what would happen.[20] The result was an interactive buddy with highly sophisticated algorithms and syntax to use the language of the conversation being conducted. These chatter bots are all but real when it comes to first level text based communication.

Does being real even matter in a virtual community since the notion of virtual is somewhat unreal itself? These chatter bots while sophisticated in their ability to mimic human conversation are not at all intelligent. It is true that they are capable of producing realistic responses, but only within the realm of their limited dialog of text. Studies have shown that within a manageable amount of time individuals will test the identity until they are sure the person they are chatting with is not actually real or either has a serious mental handicap. It is only a matter of time before their design will render them capable of actually cloaking themselves as a real human. The idea of studying the notion of identity in computers was first presented by Alan Turing in his paper on “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” in 1950. Turing called into question the ability for a machine to think. To some extent, machines mimic the processes and conclusions humans go through when they reach a point when making a decision. This may be the case, but it can be a bit of a stretch to say machines can think.

Turing didn’t think this question could be of much use beyond philosophy. Instead he sought to answer the question if a computer could fool a human judge into thinking he was really a human. The “Turing Test” is used today to classify some level of intelligence of computers. It is a test based on a traditional parlor game known as the imitation game. The participants try and guess which one of the players is the female of the people behind a curtain. The imitators offer hand written questions and clues as to their gender. The game is used to determine one’s knowledge of gender roles. The Turing Test much like the imitation game supposes an ability to mimic human roles equals a certain level of intelligence. In the early 1960s, MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum designed ELIZA, a simple program that parsed natural language. ELIZA was one of the first interactive agents. ELIZA took words from the user’s statement and switched it around to another coherent question.[21] It scored well in the Turing Test as it was able to act like a human to some extent. When one compares this to various aspects of psychoanalysis; for example, when psychiatrists turn individual statements into forms of questions directed back to the individual, the ability to act like a human is much closer.[22]

Knowing how truth and honesty interrelate with identity in the digital culture has many repercussions for future direction of the internet. One designer commented that: “Our goal is to get a general theory of cooperative communication in distributed systems. Such a theory would lead to more efficient communication in systems of cooperating agents (where the “agents” might well be processors in a distributed system or communicating robots).”[23]

Trust in Time and Space

Changing notions of trust can also be extended to changing notions of time and space. In the book the Robot in Garden, edited by Ken Goldberg there are countless essays examining how the internet has changed human perception of the space and time. Distance is a key factor in the development of significant technological innovations. Like the telescope, the telephone or the television knowledge from a distance has always been a prominent pursuit for mankind. The internet is no different in bringing information from a distance or controlling information over a distance. The authors of the book describe this as the “study of knowledge acquired at a distance;” telepistemology.[24] The internet increases the possibility of remote access to a larger world. Still, there is a high level of control to that larger world. For example, many have been fooled into believing the deception of live footage when it is actually prerecorded. Now, there are an increasing number of telerobots who operate remotely via a network. The inspiration for the title of the book was developed from the Telegarden, a remote robot who was controlled by internet users who were responsible for tending a real garden located at the Ars Electronic Museum in Austria.[25]

The experiment was revealing in the fact that an overwhelming amount of people did not believe the garden was indeed real, although they could see the effects of their work through live pictures. Great lengths were taken to point out how such an experiment could be faked. In a similar experiment presently being conducted a Tele-actor is maneuvered around a physical space such as an empty building, a rainforest, a political rally, or a rock concert. The tele-actor is much like a physical tour guide exploring the space and moving with wireless cameras and microphones following the instructions a network of up to 1000 users. The system bases decisions for movement and exploration around a voting system called Spatial Dynamic Voting where users interact with each other to determine the progress of the live event. This idea is centered on experimenting and defining the notion of shared control.[26] While these experiments have been the focal point for understanding how people interact online they have brought up some important issues relating to time and space and how people trust the extended world online.

Trust and Memory

If it is true that the purpose of individual memory is to survive the death of the moment, then it is equally true that the purpose of collective memory is to survive the death of the individual. --Tim McLaughlin[27]

Individual memory is another point where the traditional overlaps with the digital. Recalling a memory of an event is what historians refer to as subjective evidence. This means that unlike a document which is grounded in time and (for the most part) unchanging in their bias and viewpoint even if their interpretation about them changes. Memory is flawed, it has had the opportunity to be shaped and changed with environment and circumstance over time. As in cases with the elderly, memory of the past can be sharp, while memory of the present can be skewed and faded. Gerontologist Robert Butler has suggested that memory “serves the sense of self and its continuity; it entertains us; it shames us; it pains us. Memory can tell our origins; it can be explanatory; and it can deceive.” [28] If individual memory defines who we are, then trust in memory must not be divorced from one’s own identity.

Memory is distrusted much in the same way as oral cultures distrusted the advent of writing as a potential for the loss for their history or collective memory. The very act of writing itself has also been contested throughout history. Before there was the ability to record information, societies largely depended on verbal communication to preserve memory.[29] In a parable to warn against the evils of written language Socrates expressed his concern for this over 2,500 years ago. In this story there are some wise yet timely comments foreshadowing to the increase of loss of memory and of written information:

For this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories. They will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence. You give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth. They will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing. They will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing. They will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.[30]

Socrates was also speaking about the trust, or authenticity of written records. He felt that the act of writing would create a social loss of memory, for which there would be a loss in truthful education. Fortunately, for him Socrates’ pupil Plato was able to write down his words and only through the survival of that written record (ironically for Socrates) was his memory able to endure over time to the present. When compared to a modern scholar’s view on the subject one is left to believe the theme of trusting in information an ongoing one:

The milieu in which Technopoly flourishes is one in which the tie between information and human purpose has been severed, i.e. information appears indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume and at high speeds, and disconnected from theory, meaning, or purpose.[31]

Neil Postman’s dark comparison between society’s relationship with technology and the need for efficiency reveal a disconnection between excessive information and the ability for society to find meaning and function within that information. In these circumstances there is a difference between collective memory and individual memory yet both are presented in the light of defining truth and what is trusted.

How has the digital environment dealt with the problem of trust in memory? In one such way technology is improving on the storage of memory or in more physical representation of memory; digital memorabilia. In 1945, Vannevar Bush suggested that in the future there would be a device, a Memex that would enable retrievable, flexible and efficient storage of all of his books, records, and communications.[32] He did not realize it at the time but he was describing a virtual archive for the individual. Something Microsoft researchers are describing as a giant virtual shoe-box, called MyLifeBits. MyLifeBits incorporates the idea that within a single year the storage capacity of a terabyte hard drive will be a feasible purchase for individual computer owners. However close the present may be to Bush’s dream of unlimited storage capacity, filling a terabyte hard drive may be a daunting task. As Microsoft researchers cleverly call it a virtual surrogate for a brain, the claim that keeping everything virtually would literally give it little or no value. Like individual memory events and past recollections are remembered because they are important. There is structure and context to memory and MyLifeBits incorporates a users understanding of a hierarchy organization of memory.[33]

Through this accumulation of media of memorabilia a digital representation (almost physical) of memory can occur. But much like taking information out of context and rearranging it to suit an individual pursuit or goal, the memory as represented in the digital environment could easily be taken and molded in unintended ways. Trust will have to be adapted or memory will be much like finding an empty bottle or a shard of pottery in the ground. Whatever digital memory archeologists in the future may drudge up, it will indeed have to incorporate a scheme for evaluating aspects of truth based in this type of system.

Conclusion:

Much of the issues expressed throughout this paper are only single topics of interest to the author of this paper. They are loosely tied together in that they explore some issue of trust. There are many other points where evaluating truth in a digital environment converge with normal culture and societal interactions. Tim Berners-Lee, internet innovator has suggested a direction of truth seeking for the web. He calls the development a “web of trust,” where information has been rigorously tested for authenticity. The web of trust would also support communication and collaboration. Given these factors, the technology that would be needed for such a task would have to combine truth factors built into documents such as digital signatures, checksums, and metadata with reasoning engines and automated agents that authentic identity and information.[34] The element of trust will have to be established in the process of creation, maintenance and preservation of the document. We are far from Berners-Lee web of trust. There are currently major problems with metadata structure such as standardizing subject control. Search engines only return the most possible relevant results in any typical topic search based on preconceived use and development of metadata. They fail in the first step in the trusted web in that they do not have the ability to rate resources on the web based on the quality and authenticity of the information.[35]

There is an extremely different point of view of the web that should be presented in some facet. Godfrey Reggio along with Philip Glass, musical composer has created a trilogy of films that deal with the balance between humans and nature. Koyaanisqatsi (life out of balance), Powaqqatsi (life in transformation) and Naqoyqatsi (life as war) were all filmed throughout the last 25 years during the advent of computers and technology. Reggio is a truly unique artist, in that he cleverly tells the viewers a story using only images while using the music of Philip Glass as the narration. He blends images in nature with images in a city in such a transitional way that one cannot tell the difference between streaming water and automobiles moving on highways. Through the entire series Reggio is unquestionably suggesting that technology will become the overall destruction of mankind. The accumulation of his thoughts is brought together in one particular scene in Naqoyqatsi. Like many of his beginning scenes in his films the camera is focused on some particular aspect in nature. In this scene animals are grazing in a field. They are startled and begin to run away from the camera, but the camera follows them as if the animals were being tracked. The music accumulates to a particularly suspenseful peek as the animals run for their lives while looking back at the camera.

Reggio sees mankind and technology as destruction of nature. His statement, however dark does tell a linear story of technological progress. As his camera moves around throughout the city he films individuals and their expressions. He captures something in his subject’s eyes that is expresses a mood Reggio may not want his audience to completely understand. In Reggio’s trilogy, in all of the scenes focusing on individual people there is a sense of dark distrust given to the camera. It is the distrust in Reggio’s lens of his camera rather than distrust in technology that he captures as the essence of his film.

The title for this paper has played on the notion of a checksum. A checksum is a value used to verify data is not corrupted during transmission. The protocols used by the internet to transfer bits of data in packets amounts for assembly upon receipt makes multi-use of the network possible. A checksum to some extent is elementary when compared to the intangible concept of trust. It starts with known information about a file, disassembles the file for transmission, and the reassembles the file upon its final destination. The checksum remembers the known information and verifies its integrity. It accounts for the unknown circumstances that may occur during the transmission. As the internet culture grows we have to determine and design methods that account for the unknown. This isn’t to say that all information, identity and happening should be distrusted first before it is trusted. It is to say that there must be some level of design either in computers or in the education in the users of computers to take traditional human factors in the truth game and apply them to the new digital culture.