Context

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

We define ourselves by what we choose to remember and to forget.

Being digital is different. We are not waiting on any invention. It is here. It is now. It is almost genetic in its nature, in that each generation will become more digital than the preceding one.

As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

"Reading maketh a full man" - reading makes a woman and a man full of information, of history, of all kinds of knowledge.

As a result, vast quantities of vital corporate information, often relating to its most important functions and processes, remain almost completely untouched by the EDRMS. When it fails to integrate with the HR system, the finance system, the virtual learning environment, laboratory equipment, the website and the CRM what are you left with? A damned expensive sledgehammer to crack the nut that is the largely ephemeral contents of most network drives.

Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.

The message is that there are no knowns.
There are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns.
That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns.
There are things we don't know we don't know.

Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless.

It is the dead who govern. 
Look you, man, how they work their will upon us! 
Who have made the laws? The dead! 
Who have made the customs that we obey and that form and shape our lives? The dead! 
And the titles to our lands? Have not the dead devised them? 
If a surveyor runs a line he begins at some corner the dead set up; and if one goes to law upon a question the judge looks backwards through his books until he finds how the dead have settled it - and he follows that. 

Citizens are entitled to know in a democracy, what is done in their name for their benefit and with their money.

Democratie is een ideaal waarvan de realisatie via democratisering dichterbij komt. Of nog: democratie is een toekomstgericht project, is steeds in ontwikkeling. Een samenleving kan echter pas vooruit kijken als het verleden een plaats heeft, als ze kan buigen op een integer geheugen, zodat op een organische manier een collectieve identiteit kan worden gevormd. Archieven vrijwaren dit recht op een eigen geschiedenis en staan mee garant voor het geheugen van de samenleving. Al kunnen we ‘hét geheugen’ best tussen aanhalingstekens plaatsen.

De Nulde wet :
"Een robot mag de mensheid geen kwaad berokkenen, of toelaten dat de mensheid door zijn nalatigheid schade lijdt"

Aanpassing van de eerste wet:
"Een robot mag een mens geen kwaad berokkenen, of toelaten dat een mens door zijn nalatigheid schade lijdt, behalve als dit in strijd is met de Nulde Wet"