A Digital Responsibility?

Just finished a book on tape, IBM and the Holocaust. It describes the measures taken by IBM to secure, and then hide, cotracts with the Nazi Reich - all for the cause of profit.. The author posits, probably quite correctly, that the extermination of millions of Jews and dissidents would not have been possible without the computations of IBM punch-card machines. Hitler didn't make the trains run on time, IBM did.

I found this book disturbing, of course, for many reasons. But chief of these, for the purpose of this blog, is that this means that our digital inheritance is partially built on the ashes of victims. When I build a database, compile statistics, or construct a mail merge, I am inadvertantly following in the footstep of SS officers as they constructed and indexed the round-up lists for the death camps. The tattoo on each arm wasn't just a number; it was the key value on each victim's punchcards.

And here we are, fifty years removed, helping both public and private enterprises gather data on us. Every credit card purchase, every online form, every questionaire is remembered somewhere. Sure, it would be a monumental undertaking, but the lesson of IBM and WWII is that there's always someone who can organize the immense, for the right price. IBM touted itself as the "solutions" company; it seems our responsibilty (the digirati) to ensure our callings never again provide "final solutions."

And in terms of fair reporting, here is short article on ABC News where IBM internally warns employees about the book.