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things get forgotten are not merely images in a glass darkly of the way things get remembered; rather they are positive phenomena worthy of study in their own right. We have discussed two kinds of forgetting: clearance and erasure. From this emerged a consideration of forgetting and potential memory (mediated by classification systems). |
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The chapter has stressed that representation in the formal record is not the only way to be remembered: indeed, there is a complex ecology of memory practices within any one organization. The shift into long-term memory, however, that the infrastructure provides is significant, if fraught. The production of transportable knowledge used in other registers (scientific texts, the law) at present assumes that this knowledge can be stored and expressed in a quite restricted range of genres. As we saw with Poincaré, it can be argued that the work of much scientific theory is the storage of information as long-term memory. To prevent continuing erasure within hospital information systems, nurses have had to operate a clearance of their own past (recorded history begins today). The prize before their eyes is a science and a profession; the danger oblivion. (Either being definitively excluded from ongoing information practices and thus relegated to an adjunct role or being included but then distributed through reengineering.) |
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There is much to be done to understand the processes of commemoration, memory, history and recall in organizations. Organizational forgetting and organizational memory are useful concepts here because they allow us to move flexibly between the formal and the informal, the material and the conceptual. Designers of information superhighways need to take the occasional stroll down memory lane. |
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