Viktor Mayer-Schönberger says the ability to forget our past, both on and offline, is an essential part of what makes us human Share 63 inShare4 Email Kate Connolly in Berlin guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 April 2013 12.50 BST Viktor Mayer-Schönberger: 'Digital memories will only remind us of the failures of our past.' Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian He describes himself as the "midwife" of the idea of the right to be forgotten. And for Viktor Mayer-Schönberger , it's not just about the legal, moral and technical arguments – but about what it is to be human. "The more I've worked on data protection over the past 20 years, the more I've realised that at the heart of this, what matters as much as the privacy aspect is the issue of human decision-making," said Mayer-Schönberger, professor of internet governance at the Oxford Internet Institute. "Humans need to make decisions about the present and the future. The beauty of