Much has been written about how technology has progressively lessened our collective and individual tendencies to forget things. This manifests itself in a hundred ways, from mundane and practical, such as being able to collected public musings of any public figure, to, on other end of spectrum, digitally storing and cataloging details of our own lives. The time will come, and most of us will live to see it, when exact time of every beat of our hearts will be digitally recorded and stored for all time, along with every other bit of minutiae of our lives. What we will do with this data is only starting to be understood, but it is clearly profound in its implications. Since so much has already been said about the end of forgetting, I will resist urge to mingle my musings with those of voices more insightful and studied on topic. Instead, I want to reflect on a slightly different and potentially disturbing question: If we cannot will this mean we cannot either?We generally regard forgetting as an annoyance. It is an indicator of aging, or perhaps fatigue, or even of illness. We tend to think, perhaps not explicitly, that forgetting is like a bug in our software, a design flaw of our brains. If given a choice between having a perfect memory or of being comically absent-minded, virtually everyone would choose former. And yet, there are people who, for all intents and purposes, never do forget. They suffer from a condition known as hyperthymesia in which they have almost perfect autobiographical recall, remembering every day of life in extraordinary detail. And interestingly, for most part, these people do not regard this as a blessing, citing a tendency to get lost in past at expense of present. Somewhat surprisingly, they generally are not particularly accomplished in other areas of life, implying that this super memory does not confer an advantage in pursuit of worldly success.So perhaps, as annoying as it is when trying to remember your password to a seldom-visited website, forgetting has its benefits as well. Forgetting might well be necessary to our survival or at least to our success. After all, there is no reason we have to forget things. It is not that our brains are incapable of remembering everything that happened to us every day, as those with hyperthymesia clearly demonstrate.So what possible use can forgetting serve? Well to begin with, forgetting is our brains' way of turning large volumes of data into compact and useful metadata in order to be able to jettison useless trivia of our lives. For example, I have probably hit my finger with a hammer dozens of times. I have learned that, without exception, it hurts like dickens. Now, here is interesting part: I cannot recall a single specific occasion when I hit my finger with a hammer. I am certain I have done it many times, but I cannot recall any one of them. Of course, there is no reason I have to. What I need to know is that it is an experience to be avoided. Once I know that, my mind can pretty safely forget particulars and nothing of consequence is lost.Forgetting also seems tied up in forgiving. We tell people to forgive and forget, presumably in that order. Almost every one of us has someone in our life who has done something to us so bad or mean or careless that, every time we see him or her, we instantly recall transgression. Now, imagine if every time you saw anyone you knew, you immediately recalled all bad things he or she had ever done to you. That would be a hard way to live.Forgiving is important. It is basis of second chances. Second chances are something we all need. After all, we are all human; thus we all make mistakes. Lots of mistakes. Sir Richard Branson is a big proponent of second chances. He tells this story: had people at Virgin who have been caught stealing and I've given them a second chance. …