Algorithmic memory and the right to be forgotten on the web

The debate on the right to be forgotten on Google involves the relationship between human information processing and\uddigital processing by algorithms. The specificity of digital memory is not so much its often discussed inability to forget.\udWhat distinguishes digital memory is, instead, its ability to process information without understanding. Algorithms only\udwork with data (i.e. with differences) without remembering or forgetting. Merely calculating, algorithms manage to\udproduce significant results not because they operate in an intelligent way, but because they ‘‘parasitically’’ exploit the\udintelligence, the memory, and the attribution of meaning by human actors. The specificity of algorithmic processing makes\udit possible to bypass the paradox of remembering to forget, which up to now blocked any human-based forgetting\udtechnique. If you decide to forget some memory, the most immediate effect is drawing attention to it, thereby activating\udremembering. Working differently from human intelligence, however, algorithms can implement, for the first time, the\udclassical insight that it might be possible to reinforce forgetting not by erasing memories but by multiplying them. After\uddiscussing several projects on the web which implicitly adopt this approach, the article concludes by raising some deeper\udproblems posed when algorithms use data and metadata to produce information that cannot be attributed to any human\udbeing