09/27/2009, "Delete" on Tour in the US  
Professor Mayer-Schönberger is on tour presenting his new book "Delete - The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age." He will be speaking at:

• New York University's Information Law Institute on October 6 at 4 pm - for details see here

• Harvard's Berkman Center on October 7 at 6 pm - for details see here

• Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy on October 8 at 4.30 pm - for details see here

• Town Hall Seattle on October 19 at 7.30 pm - for details see here

• University of California Berkeley Law School on October 22 at 4 pm

09/25/2009, Interview on CBC Radio  
Click to open SparkCanadian Broadcasting Corporation CBC radio tech show Spark is airing an interview of Spark's Nora Young with Professor Mayer-Schönberger on September 27 about his new book "Delete" and the importance of forgetting in the digital age.

The interview can be found here, including an unedited version.

09/20/2009, "Delete" on Lanigan and Malone Morning Show  
Click to open LaniganMaloneWhy is it sometimes good to forget? Should information have an expiration date? These and other questions were brought up in a conversation Webster Lanigan and Jimmy Malone of Majic 105.7 had with Professor Mayer-Schönberger about his new book, "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age." You can listen to the interview here.

09/20/2009, New Book: Delete - The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age  
Click to open DBProfessor Mayer-Schönberger's new book, "Delete - The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age", published by Princeton University Press, is hot off the press and now available at online and offline bookstores, including at Amazon.

Delete looks at the surprising phenomenon of perfect remembering in the digital age, and reveals why we must reintroduce our capacity to forget. Digital technology empowers us as never before, yet it has unforeseen consequences as well. Potentially humiliating content on Facebook is enshrined in cyberspace for future employers to see. Google remembers everything we've searched for and when. The digital realm remembers what is sometimes better forgotten, and this has profound implications for us all.

In Delete, Professor Mayer-Schönberger traces the important role that forgetting has played throughout human history, from the ability to make sound decisions unencumbered by the past to the possibility of second chances. The written word made it possible for humans to remember across generations and time, yet now digital technology and global networks are overriding our natural ability to forget--the past is ever present, ready to be called up at the click of a mouse. Mayer-Schönberger examines the technology that's facilitating the end of forgetting--digitization, cheap storage and easy retrieval, global access, and increasingly powerful software--and describes the dangers of everlasting digital memory, whether it's outdated information taken out of context or compromising photos the Web won't let us forget. He explains why information privacy rights and other fixes can't help us, and proposes an ingeniously simple solution--expiration dates on information--that may.

A book trailer can be found here at YouTube, and the first chapter can be downloaded for free here courtesy of Princeton University Press.

09/15/2009, DIE ZEIT cites Mayer-Schönberger on Net Generation  
Click to open TitleIn its coverage of the politics of the Internet generation in German (as part of a series of articles on the upcoming German general election) German weekly DIE ZEIT repeatedly quotes Professor Mayer-Schönberger.

The articles can be found here and here (in German).

09/10/2009, NPR features "Delete"  
Click to open NPRNational Public Radio's (NPR) news blog features an interview with Professor Mayer-Schönberger on the importance of forgetting in the digital age, and his new book "Delete".

The posting includes a podcast, and for some time even made it on NPR's coveted front page. It can be found here.

09/09/2009, On Forgetting in Switzerland  
Professor Mayer-Schönberger spoke about the need to revive forgetting in the digital age at the annual Symposium Privacy and Security, hosted by the Swiss data protection commissioners and held at ETH Zurich. More information can be found here.

09/07/2009, EDEM Keynote: The End of eGov?  
Click to open TitleProfessor Mayer-Schönberger keynoted EDEM 2009, a conference on Electronic Democracy. In his presentation he highlighted the unkept promises of the recent electronic government wave, and its reasons, and suggested a conceptually different, less technology driven and focused approach: information government.

More on Information Government can be found here.

09/01/2009, Mayer-Schönberger on Social Networking  
Austrian news weekly PROFIL reported on social networking applications, and interview an extensive interview with Professor Mayer-Schönberger, about the consequences of the social networking boom, privacy implications, as well as his own social networking behaviors.

08/16/2009, On "Voice of America"....  
American broadcaster Voice of America (VOA) hosted Professor Mayer-Schönberger in an online chat today, covering the broad spectrum of Internet security. A transcript of the chat can be found here.

08/09/2009, Sunday Times features "Delete"  
Click to open Sunday TimesThe British Sunday Times discussed Professor Mayer-Schönberger's upcoming book "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age" in its August 9, 2009 issue.

Editor James Harkin agreed with Professor Mayer-Schönberger and wrote about the importance of getting Google to forget.

08/05/2009, "New Scientist" reports on Mayer-Schönberger's Research  
Click to open New ScientistWeekly international science magazine "New Scientist" has just reported on I+I Centre Director Viktor Mayer-Schönberger's work on the difficulties of radical innovation to take hold in densely connected online communities. The piece, entitled "Cosy social networks 'are stifling innovation'" explains how reducing connectedness may lead to pockets of more radical experimentation and innovation.

08/01/2009, WIRED features "Delete"  
Click to open WiredIn the August 2009 edition of premier digital age magazine WIRED, Clive Thompson reviewed Professor Mayer-Schönberger's upcoming book "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age". Calling it a "fascinating book", Thompson goes on to concur with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger's proposal to introduce expiration dates for information.

07/31/2009, Science Paper Makes Headlines  
Click to open El PaisInternational media around the globe have been reporting findings of Professor Mayer-Schönberger's recent paper in Spanish, French, and German in addition to English. The paper, published in SCIENCE, suggests that massive peer production may not be conducive to radical innovation.

"El Pais", the most widely-circulated daily newspaper in Spain reported extensively on the findings (in Spanish). Austrian daily "Der Standard" offered an interview with Mayer-Schönberger, and so did business daily "Wirtschaftsblatt". In Germany, popular online site "Telepolis / Heise Online" reported, adding yet another interview. In France, "L'Atelier" offered its take.

07/23/2009, MSNBC Reports on Mayer-Schönberger's Research  
Click to open MSNBCMSNBC.com featured Professor Mayer-Schönberger's recent research on the innovativeness of open source software.

The story, entitled "Too much networking?", was authored by MSNBC's lead science editor Alan Boyle, and can be found here.

07/22/2009, Can We Reinvent the Internet?  
Click to open ScienceOne of the top scientific journals, SCIENCE, just published a paper by Professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger. In the paper, Mayer-Schönberger looked at the difficulties of radical innovation in Internet times. Here is the abstract:

Recently, researchers who support "network neutrality" have become worried that the Internet may lose its innovative edge. They are concerned that control could be shifting from the edges of the Internet toward the service providers at the center, which would allow the providers to have "gatekeeper" capacity and would contradict the Internet's "end-to-end" principle (1–3). This core tenet states that control over information flows should take place, to the extent possible, at the end points of the network (4). President Obama supported net neutrality during his campaign (4) and in recent statements (5), and the European Parliament has added net neutrality to its recent telecom bill (6). Taking the end-to-end principle from protocols to users, Jonathan Zittrain has called for maintaining the Internet's "generativity," the ability of users at the network's end points to create, distribute, and run whatever software code they choose (7). There are good reasons to preserve network neutrality and generativity, but it is unclear whether these are sufficient to ensure continued innovation. The larger issue is what policies are optimal to foster innovation on the Internet?

The full paper can be found at Science 24 July 2009: Vol. 325. no. 5939, pp. 396 - 397, DOI: 10.1126/science.1178418.

06/18/2009, The Future of Copyright  
Click to open VOEZProfessor Mayer-Schönberger addressed the annual meeting of Austria's print media publishers today in Vienna. Asked to focus on the future of copyright, he sketched a cautionary path, suggesting that law cannot take on the role of adjusting business models to a global changed environment.

06/01/2009, Mayer-Schönberger Addresses Ministerial Forum  
Click to open IDAProfessor Mayer-Schönberger addressed the delegations of the Fifth Ministerial Forum on ICT on June 1, 2009. Organized and hosted by Singapore's Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), the forum brought together telecom and infocomm ministers from the region to discuss ICT strategies and policies. This year the forum adopted an information government focus, highlighted by Professor Mayer-Schönberger's presentation.

For the book on information government at Amazon, please see here.