The freedom to forget

This commentary engages with Whitehead and Hannah's concept of the 'digital involuntary' to examine how smart technologies reshape human memory and forgetting. Drawing on Nietzsche's phenomenology of remembrance and Ricoeur's work on freedom as negotiated consent to necessities, the article argues that memory and forgetting constitute a fundamental involuntary process essential to identity formation and decision-making. The commentary reveals how digital systems create ambiguity around the agency of remembrance, making it difficult to distinguish who or what is generative of memories. This analysis extends the concept of the digital involuntary beyond social media platforms, suggesting its broader application to smart home technologies and other domains where consent operates beyond simple participation decisions.