Digital Memory

I googled “Delete’’ recently, found it is very interesting. “Delete” is a book that looks at the surprising phenomenon of perfect remembering in the digital age and why we must reintroduce our capacity to forget. In “Delete” author Viktor Mayer Schonberger traces the important role that forgetting has played throughout human history.

The whole book is about one subject: digital memory, an offspring of the digital age. Some may say this is fantastic futuristic. It is wonderful for having a perfect memory, for not forgetting things at all. But is it a wonderful thing at all? Humiliating content on facebook for future employers to see, google remembers everything we have searched for and when.

You may argue that if you are afraid of breach your own privacy then you just have to be careful, know what you are doing, don’t upload photos with humiliating content, don’t send e-mail with personal information. But the fact is: Is it that simple?

We are living in a digital world; everybody has a camera phone these days, cctv everywhere, you may can control yourself but what about the others.

You may be a victim of a crime and somebody recorded put it on youtube, knowing there are thousands people are watching your pain and suffering, watching what you were going through everyday for their own amusement, how can you move on, how can you forget. Ok maybe that example is a little bit extreme, what about somebody uploads some photos with you in it, what if those photos are; let’s say it is not the best of you. You may argue again: then don’t do stupid things. But we are human being; we make mistake and we learn from it so we don’t make the same mistake again and to be a better human being. How often do you say to yourself; oh I shouldn’t say that, I wish I can go back time to change that, I just want to forget it and move on. Forgetting is exactly the right medicine for it, either intentional or unintentional.

 Forgetting is an important function of our brain; it has significant effect on our body, psychologically and physically. Often crime victims lose their short-term memory, they just can’t remember what happened to them, that is just their brain copping with the traumatic events that has happened, forget temporarily is a way to help the victims to recover and prevent further harm psychologically.

You may say again: this is just part of life; we just have to deal with it. But as a species we are so resilient, we never surrender to our fate, which is why we have medicine to help us fight of disease, invented machines to help us to do our job, why can’t we do the same with digital memory, why can’t we find a solution to solve the problem.

We all deserve second chance, away from our past, away from our mistakes, We all deserve our privacy; deserve to be left alone, so we can lick our wound and move on, We all should working together to resolve this problem, or the next problem, to improve technology, humanize technology, to make our life better.