Reviews of "Delete" appear in NATURE and New Scientist

Two reviews of "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age" by I+I director, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, have recently appeared in the famed NATURE as well as in the popular magazine "New Scientist." Both present a thoughtful discussion, which accounts for the arguments of the "Delete" as well as for those suggesting that it is natural and desired that our society is moving towards a total recall.

Fred Turner of Stanford, has published a very thoughtful review of "Delete" in the NATURE (full story here). He reviews "Delete" in a juxtaposition to another recent book, "Total Recall," which views "the arc of human development (..) as an ongoing quest for Total Recall" and considers our growing ability to document and digitally store every moment of our lives as a step that will ultimately bring the humanity "to a new socio-technical evolution." Turner, however, shares Mayer-Schönberger's concern that "through perfect memory we may loose a fundamental human capacity - to live and act firmly in the present."

Yadin Dudai of Weizmann Institute of Science is using a similar strategy of juxtaposing "Delete" and "Total Recall" in his opinion article in the "New Scientists" and reaches a similar conclusion to that of Fred Turner. Dudai echos, Mayer-Schönberger's observation that "evolution has created the brain in such a way that the traces of experience do fade over time, receding into oblivion" as a survival mechanism. He highlights that Mayer-Schönberger's proposal of expiration dates in electronic files "should not be forgotten as we navigate between the urge to record and immortalise our lives and the need to stay productive and sane."

(Art work by hoggardb under the by-nc-nd Creative Commons License)