Today’s guest on NPR’s Talk of the Nation was author, academic, and privacy expert Viktor Mayer-Schonberger. Mayer-Schonberger came on the program to discuss his latest book Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. The book focuses on how the long memory of the Internet hinders individuals from dealing with past mistakes and moving on with their lives. Mayer-Schonberger cites the example of Stacy Snyder, a Pennsylvania teacher who was fired for a picture on MySpace labeled “Drunk Pirate,” as an example.
I have included a small excerpt of Delete below. For the full excerpt, and to listen to the entire NPR segment, go here.
Do we want a future that is forever unforgiving because it is unforgetting? “Now a stupid adolescent mistake can take on major implications and go on their records for the rest of their lives,” comments Catherine Davis, a PTA co-president. If we had to worry that any information about us would be remembered for longer than we live, would we still express our views on matters of trivial gossip, share personal experiences, make various political comments, or would we self-censor? The chilling effect of perfect memory alters our behavior.
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If all our past activities, transgressions or not, are always present, how can we disentangle ourselves from them in our thinking and decision-making? Might perfect remembering make us as unforgiving to ourselves as to others?
Mayer-Schonberger’s parting questions are compelling. Should a person be forever judged by something foolish they did years ago? All but the most vindictive of us would agree the answer is no. And yet, thanks to the Internet, we can’t help but see these past transgressions and make judgments based on them. In doing so, we are perpetuating the abusrd notion that mistakes are unforgivable, and we are scaring people out of joining conversations for fear that they might say something that will wind up on their “permanent records.”
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[...] interviews with transcripts. Blogs about Mayer-Schönberger’s ideas are Reputationdefender, Harvard Berkman Center, Princeton University Press, Only Dead Fish, Reuters Great Debate, [...]
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