boing boing talks about what happens with second chances when computers don’t forget.
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I’ve been thinking bout it for quite some time: if computers dont forget, how can society move on?
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I imagine some cultures will become a class society, a faux democracy with some selected few picked in the infancy with a spin machine all over their lives, to make them shiny, hence electable. since this lifetime spin doctoring is damn expensive, it would be a society in thrall of interest groups. puritan societies tend to that: they have high standards of how people should live, and won’t give it up that easy.
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other will be more forgiving, humane, letting it go of our previous image of ourselves. then again, it can become corrupt with double standards. some people are free to do something, some are not. it’s all about PR wars for the public perception. latin america works this way.
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we can also point to radical transparency, a sort of digital eye contact: you’re free to look at any info, but the records (of who, what, when) are also public. if you see me, i see you seeing me. we humans are good at that. it will be a society of bots, daemons amassing data about spectators of ourselves, giving us reports and asking for “what to do next”. for that to happen, we need to legislate our way in: it’s a complicated world, but at least it levels the playing field.
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or, we can legislate each person possess its own digital shadow - say, we have an untransferable copyright over our digital traces - and any system that keeps personal info is in fact dealing with radioactive material. pirate party to restore privacy, heh?