“The solutions proposed do exactly what has not been happening, opening a dialogue for what is happening to our mental and social health as technology inevitably continues to “perfect” our cultural memories…”

By now (2024), Mayer-Schonberger’s argument is based upon some quite dated material about the internet and the social media panopticon. The first half of the book is largely read with horror as witless victims have their reputations ruined by long-forgotten media posts, and we see that the reach is growing, even spreading further than MySpace accounts.

So let’s set all the dated stuff aside, and focus instead on, perhaps a vital two chapters of Mayer-Schonberger’s six chapter book: the underlying paradigm changes from “perfect memory” and the possible solution he proposes.

On the first, he suggests two dynamics that are still very much at work, and in even greater ways than he foresees back in 2008: power over information and time. He argues effectively that so long as information is held in imbalance of power (either in quantity of information or political power), privacy and social-economic integrity are not safe. We individuals will never “know” as much about Meta or Amazon or Google or The-Next-Great-MegaCorp-or-Gov’t as they do about us. And they profit and grow in power from this imbalance. Today, we come to this issue far too late and only in the guise of weak anti-monopoly laws. He also says that since our concept of time is changed (having, in effect, perfect memory of our pasts), our ability to maintain relationships is altered. It’s difficult to at first imagine why forgetfulness is essential to mental health, but then we have both arguments from biology and psychiatry to explain it easily enough. It’s very nearly a survival strategy. But now our personal and social traumas are at beck-and-call (or not called).

Each of these issues should be cause for serious debate and discourse in our culture, but worse than our author supposes, we have instead dove headlong into the pool of ignorance, especially on this last point, apologizing with the most vapid of accusations: “Social media is a problem for our youth.”

And this leads to his own proposal, and it is simple enough: Have what is essentially an expiration tag on data, much as we might for spoiling food. Companies can only hold our data for so long, those terrible middle school poems will only stay with me for 10 years of embarrassing stories and then vanish utterly. This is an easily achievable goal and, while it will not solve all of the issues, Mayer-Schonberger offers plenty of other options that would work in tandem.

But here’s the most important take-away from this book: the solutions proposed do exactly what has not been happening, opening a dialogue for what is happening to our mental and social health as technology inevitably continues to “perfect” our cultural memories, to inundate us with so much needlessness, that we can no longer sort what is vital from what is trivial, personally and politically.

This is a dry and dated read, but still vital for all of that.