So for example if we would have to wait for 10 second rather than 0.1 second to retrieve emails from five years ago, we would not so easily ‘stumble» over these old and largely irrelevant pieces of information accidentally. It is the digital equivalent of the shoebox of photographs in the attic: they are still there, but retrieving them is not costless.
documents forever. Today, many institutions and organizations, including governments can store all the information they have about us for years and decades, combining them, and knowing about us what we have long forgotten. Thus the power shifts. Simona Fiore: You write that: “But more so than atoms, information bits are malleable – as I mentioned, they can easily be changed, and thus history altered. What happens when people realize that past can no longer be trusted?” What do you think would the consequences be, if we’d begin to putting trust only on the digital memory? Viktor Mayer Schönberger: If we begin to trust digital memory more so than our own biological memory, if we ‘outsource» remembering, then our memory depends on the authenticity and accessibility of our digital archives of the Google index, the Flickr photo stream and our Facebook account. We assume digital information is authentic, but it can be easily
Simona Fiore: In the book you state that: “This trend… transfers power from the surveyed to the surveyors, as information experts have eloquently pointed out”: could you give me an explanation of this? Viktor Mayer Schönberger: Yes, if information is power, those that have information about us also have power. Until now this power was largely ephemeral it would vanish quickly because keeping and retaining information was costly. Only for the most important political opponents in the Soviet Union, the KGB would stamp ‘never to be forgotten» on their files and keep all of the incriminating
changed in fact more easily,and more perfectly than analog information. So as we outsource remembering, we also empower those that control the digital archives. Simona Fiore: What’s the main difference between the distortion affecting information recovered from
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