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The right to be forgotten is a natural consequence of reality - nothing is by default permanent. It's digital systems that have perverted reality by persisting information beyond its normal short lifetime.

If there's one law of the universe it's that nothing is permanent.

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What if I did something and it was written down in a book?

Books have limited print runs. Many books in libraries are only borrowed and perhaps read a few times. Niche titles more so. Books go out of print and are hard to search for arbitrary text.

But digital can also be lost. I think my point is that digital isn't a clear line in this situation

The ease of making copies of digital data, the ease of indexing them is totally different from books, just as writing, clay tablets, scrolls and books were from a purely oral society.

We can "what if" ourselves into any position we want. The fact is that digital surveillance is here and does collect information about people in a scope that is qualitatively different than putting information in books.

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