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describe what happened) noted as early as 1907 that "the pasteven of a simple eventwas less a record than a sort of taxonomy. Not perceptions, but categorization of familiar types was the major function of memory" (cited in Matsuda 1996, 109). |
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Any complex information infrastructurepaper or electronic, formal or informalclaims by its nature to contain all and only the information that is needed for the smooth running of that organization. Organizations frequently want to know everything relevant about some past action. For example, if there is a blackout along the West Coast due to a tree falling in Idaho, an awful amount of information needs to be recalled and synthesized for the connection to be made. Frequently, a prime function of recordkeeping in the organization is to keep track of what is going on so that, should anyone ever want to know (auditors, a commission of inquiry, and so forth), a complete reconstruction of the state of the organization at a particular moment can be made. For instance, Hutchins (1995, 20) talks about the role of the logs kept by navy ships of all their movements. "Aboard naval vessels . . . records are always keptprimarily for reasons of safety, but also for purposes of accountability. Should there be a problem, the crew will be able to show exactly where the ship was and what it was doing at the time of the mishap." For something to be remembered officially by an organization, however, it must be recorded on a form. Forms necessarily impose categories (Berg and Bowker 1997). |
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No reconstruction will cover literally everything that was going on at a particular moment. Rather, it will capture primarily objects that fit into the organization's accepted classification scheme of relevant events. The kind of memory that is encoded in an organization's files for the purposes of a possible future reconstruction could be called "potential memory." We are using the word potential to draw attention to the distributed, mediated nature of the record. No one person remembers everything about a medical intervention, and generally it can be processed through an organization without ever having been recalled. There is a possible need to recall any one intervention in huge detail, however, and the only way that the possible need can be met is through the construction of a classification system that allows for the efficient pigeonholing of facts. |
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Within the hospital, nursing work has been deemed irrelevant to any possible future reconstruction; it has been canonically invisible (Star 1991a, Star and Strauss 1999). The logic of NIC's advocates is that what has been excluded from the representational space of medical practice should be included. |
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