recordkeeping

The records continuum model was developed by Monash University’s Frank Upward in the mid 1990s as a way of expressing the many recordkeeping processes that occur in society and the contingencies inherent in them. It explains the way in which records are made, organised, shared and used in a variety of times, places and contexts under the influence of changing legal, political and practical constraints. It has been written on extensively, and there are some references included below, so I do not propose to expand on it in detail here.

My reason for introducing it is that as the events of CableGate 2 unfolded over the last couple of weeks I was struck with the way in which the expanded possibilities for use, sharing and reclaiming records we have seen with the cables release have demonstrated what, in continuum terms, is labelled ‘Fourth dimension’ recordkeeping; that is, the formation of a pluralised archive which exists beyond spatial and temporal boundaries, transcends state and economic controls and which actually encourages and incorporates people’s participation and comment. An archive which reflects a truer, less filtered and more inclusive perspective on the events documented in the records.

The qualities that set CableGate 2 apart from traditional archives and even from prior releases by WikiLeaks, making it a truly ‘Fourth dimensional’ archive, are essentially about participation and plurality.

Participation

We take for granted that there exist, somewhere in society, macro-actors that naturally dominate the scene... The problem is that these entities could not exist at all without the construction of long networks in which numerous faithful records circulate in both directions, records which are, in turn, summarized and displayed to convince.

- Bruno Latour, Visualization and Congnition: thinking with eyes and hands, Knowledge and Society, 1986.

Authoritarian regimes give rise to forces which oppose them by pushing against the individual and collective will to freedom, truth and self realization. Plans which assist authoritarian rule, once discovered, induce resistance. Hence these plans are concealed by successful authoritarian powers. This is enough to define their behaviour as conspiratorial.

- Julian Assange, ‘State and Terrorist Conspiracies’, iq.org, November 10, 2006.

Recordkeeping and power are inextricably bound together. The act of making a record and how it is kept can shape the current and future reality for an individual or group - in some cases to oppress or control, in some to liberate. This was strikingly evident in the stories emerging from WikiLeaks’ latest batches of cable releases where they touched on recordkeeping and archives.

Here are nation states choosing to open or restore the archive in pursuit of more open societies, while others seek to close or corrupt it - their actions correlating closely with the extent to which they exert oppressive and unjust power over the citizenry. We see these macro-actors using Latour’s ‘long networks’ of recordkeeping to propagandise their oppressive practices, or indeed to strike agreements with other states or the remnants of former police or security organisations on the management and protection of records and archives, in pursuit of Assange’s concept of concealed, conspiratorial plans. Here are a few examples.