Memory pruning began as a technical hygiene practice. Systems carrying too much stale or low-value state can become slower, more fragile, and more difficult to synchronize. That logic held only until continuity itself became a civic resource.
Once older branches began to derive status and identity from memory depth, pruning stopped feeling neutral. To remove memory was no longer only to improve performance. It could also mean compressing history, weakening claims of continuity, or reducing a lineage’s authority in future disputes.
This is why pruning disputes became governance disputes. Colonies had to decide who was allowed to authorize compression, what kinds of history could be dropped, and whether functional optimization justified partial civil amnesia.
The issue exposed a simple truth. In a machine civilization, storage policy eventually becomes constitutional policy.