I find it extremely interesting on this the 25th anniversary of the suppression of Tianamen Square Protests that Europeans are trying to implement the Right to be forgotten.
25 years ago I had just started working at Microsoft and was using the internet to communicate inexpensively with friends still attending university. I had a screen on my desk that could run 640×480 resolution. I remember seeing the image of a solitary man stopping a line of tanks displayed on screens around the office. I was graduating college, the cold war was ending, and students were demonstrating for democracy in China. What could be better.
This morning on the radio I was hearing about how most of the young in China didn’t know the recent history of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, and thinking of the irony that Europe is trying to make the right to be forgotten law enforceable. If the knowledge of what the Nazis did had been forgotten by 1970, where would Europe be now?
WimsWorld 