Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age

In "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age", Viktor Mayer-Schonberger examines and analyzes the problems associated with how modern technology allows easy storage and access to digital data. According to the author, the almost perfect memory that modern machines provide, can entangle and suppress the growth of individuals. He argues that humanity has reached an era, where deleting and "forgetting" information has actually become more expensive than storing and remembering them, and claims that this presents a challenge to both society as whole and its individual members.

Mr. Mayer-Schonberger gives two examples to illustrate his point. The first if of Stacy Snyder, 25 years old, who was denied a teaching certification, after college administrators discovered that one of her photos on MySpace shows her wearing a pirate hat while drinking. The second is of Andrew Feldmar, a Canadian psychotherapist, who was denied entry into USA, after his article was found on the internet, in which he describes his experiments with LSD in the 1960s.

The author proposes various solutions to the problem. The main one is the introduction of so-called "expiration" dates to data held on the internet.

I disagree with both Mr. Mayer-Schonberger's diagnosis of the problem, and with the proposed solution. First of all, the two examples appear to be poorly selected and do not support his case very well, as both described problems have actually little to do with "digital memory" and "digital forgetting", and rather deal with different aspects of modern society. Mrs. Snyder's photograph was a current photo, and not one from the past, and as such, even if digital data could be "forgotten", it wouldn't have helped her case. Moreover, the college authorities made it clear, that other factors were taken into account when they made the decision, and the photograph itself played only a minor part. As for Mr. Feldmar, his article was published academically, which again means that it would have been publicly available, even if digital data could be "forgotten". Again, the biggest issue here seems to be the strict anti-drug laws, which treat a drug addict and a psychotherapist dealing with LSD in the same way. It's nor really the fault of "digital memory".

Secondly, Mr. Mayer-Schonberger doesn’t seem to consider the fact that society would simply adapt. As with any stable system, negative feedback will kick in after some time and set things right. On one hand, too much information would mean that people looking for something in particular would have harder time of finding it. It might actually be more difficult to notice an incriminating photo of a teacher candidate if there are thousands photographs of her published on the internet. Moreover, people will realize, that "everyone does it" and will stop paying much attention to it. On the other hand, people themselves will learn that the internet "doesn't forget" and will think twice before posting any of their personal information that they don't want to spread to the rest of the world.

The author's proposed solution is both expensive and difficult to implement. Someone will have to control if the "expiration dates" are being implemented correctly and this could easily lead to creating more problems rather than solving them. The best solution is, as is often the case, for the governments to do nothing and simply adopt a laissez-faire approach.