Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger Oxford Internet Institute
1200 - 1330 Thursday 4 November 2010
Room NAB 4.21
All through the analogue age, for humans it has been easy to forget, and hard to remember. In the digital age, the situation has reversed: today the default is to store and remember; forgetting has become the exception. This has profound consequences for individuals and society, from how (informational) power is allocated to whether and how we retain our Capacity to act in time. In this talk I analyze these consequences as well as possible solutions - legal, cognitive and technical - to address the challenge posed by comprehensive digital memory.
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is the OII's Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation. His research focuses on the role of information in a networked economy. He was previously Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Director of the Information + Innovation Policy Research Centre. Before coming to the LKYSPP he spent ten years on the faculty of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
Professor Mayer-Schönberger has published seven books, including most recently 'Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age' (Princeton University Press 2009) and 'Governance and Information Technology' (MIT Press 2007), as well as over a hundred articles (including in Science) and book chapters. A native Austrian, Professor Mayer-Schonberger founded Ikarus Software in 1986, a company focusing on data security, and developed Virus Utilities, which became the best-selling Austrian software product. He was voted Top-5 Software Entrepreneur in Austria in 1991 and Person-of-the-Year for the State of Salzburg in 2000.
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