The End of Forgetting 329
Hugh Pickens recommends a long piece in last week's NY Times Magazine covering a wide swath of research and thinking in the US and elsewhere on the subject of the perils to society of recording everything permanently, and the idea that perhaps we ought to build forgetting into the Internet. "We've known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism, and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is, at an almost existential level, threatening to our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew. In a recent book, Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, the cyberscholar Viktor Mayer-Schönberger cites the case of Stacy Snyder — who was denied a teaching certificate on the basis of a single photo on MySpace — as a reminder of the importance of 'societal forgetting.' By erasing external memories, he says in the book, 'our society accepts that human beings evolve over time, that we have the capacity to learn from past experiences and adjust our behavior.' In traditional societies, where missteps are observed but not necessarily recorded, the limits of human memory ensure that people's sins are eventually forgotten. By contrast, Mayer-Schönberger notes, a society in which everything is recorded 'will forever tether us to all our past actions, making it impossible, in practice, to escape them.' He concludes that 'without some form of forgetting, forgiving becomes a difficult undertaking.'"
Stigma (Score:4, Funny)
I'd be appalled if anyone found out I used to program in Smalltalk.
Re:Learning Without a Negative Response? (Score:4, Funny)
Genghis Khan asked to be buried without markings. According to legend, the funeral escort killed anyone and anything across their path, to conceal where he was finally buried. After the tomb was completed, the slaves who built it were massacred, and then the soldiers who killed them were also killed.
You may consider a similar approach to facebook privacy.
Re:Learning Without a Negative Response? (Score:1, Funny)
And welcome to the wonderful world of summer internship at the Cock Ring Taste Testers Laboratory here at Gaylord, MN!
Re:Stigma (Score:2, Funny)
I'd be appalled if anyone found out I used to program in Smalltalk.
I had to program in COBOL at one point. Luckily, I managed to destroy any evidence.
Re:On the other hand.... (Score:5, Funny)
Who says that people who never drink, never screw, and never do anything wrong don't know how to have a good time, you self-righteous, judgmental prick?
Re:On the other hand.... (Score:3, Funny)
the self-righteous goody-goody people in our society who never drink, never screw, never do anything wrong at all
Man, if only that were the case. Then they would be nothing more than an evolutionary anomaly that would take exactly one generation to correct.
Re:The media disagrees (Score:3, Funny)
How many times do you hear a statement like, "he never drinks," being used as a euphemism for, "he is a moral and upstanding citizen" or something to that effect?
That reminds me of an old joke. A newspaper reporter is interviewing a man on his 100th brithday, and he asks "what do you attribute your long life to?"
The old man says "Well, first, I don't drink. I don't smoke, and I never let a drop of alcohol pass my lips. I go to church every sunday and of course I don't drink. I eat a balanced diet and I never touch alcohol. I get regular exersize, and I've never been inside a tavern..."
Just then there's a loud crash in the other room. The reporter, startled, exclaims "What was that?"
The old man says "Don't worry, that's my dad. He gets like that when he's drunk."
Re:Learning Without a Negative Response? (Score:3, Funny)