Evolving digital technology has provided a steady aid for people in their quest to remember virtually everything. Social networking sites remind you of friends’ birthdays, digital calendars send you reminders, and photos posted online preserve memories indefinitely.
But Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, author of Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, argues that now is the time to reintroduce our ability to forget. The indelible digital memory can be as unforgiving as it is helpful. Mayer-Shonberger suggests an expiration date for information.
Mayer-Shonberger talks about his book, Delete, with Neal Conan, and makes his case for why forgetting is essential.
I don’t know
I think this problem has always been around, it’s just a lot easier to find evidence these days than it used to be.
How many tv shows and movies have we seen when to discredit a senior judge or candidate for office or a supreme judge someone sends researchers to plough through old university magazines, interview friends and staff and look at everything they have written. There is no difference in theory between that and someone posting a photo on Facebook. It’s just so much easier, faster and cheaper to do it these days.
A lot of it comes down to stupidity, not protecting your photo albums on Facebook to friends only, putting things on public profiles on MySpace or using your real name/email address on forums. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong but there is a point to looking at peoples pasts, but you can’t just go on that basis, if you do then surely you are being biased which, in some countries and in some circumstances could be considered an illegal act when deciding on applicants for jobs for example.