The Great Debate UK
Remembering how to forget in the Web 2.0 era
Amid ongoing debates over the hazards of excessive digital exposure through such Web 2.0 social networking platforms as Facebook and Twitter, a new book by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger extols the virtues of forgetfulness.
Since the emergence of digital technology and global networks, forgetting has become an exception, Mayer-Schonberger writes in “Delete”.
“Forgetting plays a central role in human decision-making,” he argues. “It lets us act in time, cognizant of, but not shackled by, past events.”
Mayer-Schonberger shared his theory on how to fight back against the digital panopticon with Reuters before giving a lecture at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London.
from Commentaries:
Gut feeling: How Google CEO valued YouTube deal
Let the second-guessing, the mock horror, the disbelief, the crowing begin.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has acknowledged he realized upfront that he was overpaying to acquire YouTube, to the tune of $1 billion, judged by any conventional measures.
The many critics of Google's $1.65 billion deal to acquire the video-sharing site three years ago will claim this confirms everything they have always said about the deal. Not quite.
from Commentaries:
Twitter backlash foretold
Technology market research firm Gartner Inc has published the 2009 "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies," its effort to chart out what's hot or not at the cutting edge of hi-tech jargon. It's just one of an annual phalanx of reports that handicap some 1,650 technologies or trends in 79 different categories for how likely the terms are to make it into mainstream corporate parlance.
Jackie Fenn, the report's lead analyst and author of the 2008 book "Mastering the Hype Cycle," delivers the main verdict:
