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.'"
Posting is forever (Score:5, Insightful)
logs (Score:2, Insightful)
Traditional societies also forgot technology (Score:4, Insightful)
What needs to change is the social practice of judging ppl too harshely, not the storage value of the internet.
On the other hand.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Learning Without a Negative Response? (Score:5, Insightful)
So don't put your dirty laundry on the internet.
This is pretty easy. The problem is making sure other people don't put your dirty laundry on the internet.
Mother nature knows best. (Score:4, Insightful)
If the internet remembered everything to begin with, the invention of deletion would be the revolution.
What use does remembering have if you can't distinguish what is important?
Nature is fully capable of remembering, yet it has built us to forget.
Mother nature knows best. Let go of what doesn't matter. Forgive and forget. We need to trust in the process (or whatever) that created us. Wanting to retain everything is simply being greedy, and no good will come of it.
Re:Mother nature knows best. (Score:1, Insightful)
what doesn't matter in the present may matter to the future.
Forgiving without forgetting (Score:5, Insightful)
'without some form of forgetting, forgiving becomes a difficult undertaking.'
Forgiving should never be based on forgetting.
Forgive, yes - give another chance, people change, mistakes of the past should not be repeated.
Forget? - This is a guaranteed method to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Forgetting isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Learning Without a Negative Response? (Score:5, Insightful)
This could be especially problematic as surveillance becomes more and more popular. That, and the increased capacity to crack security (either through botnets, or exploiting weaknesses in algorithms)
Re:On the other hand.... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. What's going to happen is the self-righteous goody-goody people in our society who never drink, never screw, never do anything wrong at all are going to get even worse about judging those of us who know how to have a good time. And the rest of us are going to stay silent and pretend to agree, because we're petrified of being judged ourselves by puritanical pricks who seem to be in charge of everything.
Re:On the other hand.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Learning Without a Negative Response? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people are slow to catch on that if it's on the internet, the world can see it. So don't put your dirty laundry on the internet.
That's fine, except that I may not be the only one posting stuff about me.
In the given example, the teacher could have been very careful not to put her drunk party photo online. But if someone else at the same party was less thoughtful, it could have had exactly the same effect, but completely out of her control.
Even more worrying is the possibility of people deliberately destroying another's reputation. There's no shortage of people in this world with a grudge against someone else. It's quite easy to imagine an example where someone fails to get a job because of something someone has posted about them. It needn't even be true; a prospective employer isn't going to take time to give you the benefit of the doubt when there's plenty of other candidates. And the person in question may never even find out what it was that lost them the job; they just don't get to the next interview stage.
And then there's the mistaken identity issue. Having googled myself a few years ago, I know of the existence of at least four other people who share my name (I have a fairly uncommon name). They're all quite different people and most of the time it's obvious which one of us a given web page is about. But not always. And especially in the age of 140 character tweets, it would be very easy for someone to take a reference to one of us and mis-interpret it as referring to another.
This is more serious than you think. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What a noob (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Forgiving without forgetting (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe so, but without the forgetting, forgiving is always provisional. You're forgiven today, but non necessarily tomorrow...
Re:On the other hand.... (Score:2, Insightful)
The truth is random people do not expect anyone they don't know well to know anything about them. This becomes different when you start becoming "famous". That gives a kind of moral justification for your party pics being made public.
As the parent says, everybody has made bad decisions in their life. Everybody seems also not recognize them by fear of the reactions. I think the problem is much more about those reactions than anything else.
Re:the long view (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is not the teacher, nor is it the fact that the teacher posted the picture online. The problem is that people believe that it is terrible for a teacher to go to a party and have a drink, and that if she chooses to do that, she should hide it away like a dirty secret.
Re:Posting is forever (Score:1, Insightful)
The problem is most employers and banking institutions will require that you give them any names you might have gone by in the past X years, where X equals whatever they think is a decent interval (usually 5 or 10). So, that means you'd still have to wait at least 5 years for the name change to be at maximum effectiveness. And if someone links your old name to your new one on the Internet, your name change was for naught.
So don't give them your old name, you say? They'll never know the difference? I wouldn't bet on that. If by chance they do find out, you can kiss your credibility good-bye for lying on an application, and that's another name sullied.
Re:On the other hand.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not on its own, we'll have to wait until some more of the old people retire/die. For high school/college age kids right now, having pictures from a party on the internet generally isn't a big deal. Even if there isn't a really stupid one of you, there's probably at least a few photos of your friends being dumb that you've seen, laughed at, and gotten over.
But that's a very unfamiliar phenomenon for people who grew up without the internet, and some people honestly just don't like things that are new to them, and don't much feel like changing their mind. Fortunately, those people get older and eventually no longer hold positions of authority, and progress slowly moves forward. We see this gradual change happening at almost every level of society, from serious things like tolerance of homosexuality, to more petty things, like dress codes at work. It's not a perfect system, but it's pretty hard to stop.
Re:On the other hand.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Learning Without a Negative Response? (Score:4, Insightful)
So don't put your dirty laundry on the internet.
The key problem here is that, in cases such as the given example, it's not dirty laundry. The social issue at hand isn't so much the retention of information, but the ability (or, in this case, inability) of people in society to properly parse and understand that information. A company would seriously be fooling itself if it thinks it preserved some kind of integrity by not hiring someone who occasionally unwinds with friends at a party. They already have employees who do that, they just ignore the fact that they don't actively know about it. The fact that they can't distinguish between the two is a problem.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Learning Without a Negative Response? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about forgetting on the web, it's about managing your public image. Some people are slow to catch on that if it's on the internet, the world can see it. So don't put your dirty laundry on the internet.
Wrong.
This isn't about managing your public image, and it doesn't matter if you don't put your dirty laundry on the Internet. If she hadn't posted that picture, somebody else might very well have done that, and the consequences would have been the same.
The problem isn't that this picture was posted. The problem is that the school board over-reacted to something that really had absolutely no bearing on her ability to teach.
The problem is that we're seriously blurring the line between public and private... Between our professional time and our personal time... Between our professional occupations and our leisure occupations...
We've got some kind of new Puritanism going around. You have to uphold the professionalism of your position 24/7. There is no room these days for being human.
Obviously we don't want our high school teachers showing up to work drunk. We don't want them drinking on the job. But she's a human being, and entitled to do whatever the hell she wants to in her off time.
But now she can't. Because somebody might snap a picture of her getting drunk. And somebody might post that on the Internet. And then she might get fired from some other job.
The media disagrees (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Learning Without a Negative Response? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't that we need to forget, the problem is that we need to *forgive*. Before this "memory" we were able to live in a fantasy/delusional world where high school and college students were all saints and boy scouts. Now, for a younger generation, party pics are there to remind them that they weren't. I bet the very same people who denied this teacher her certificate did the exact same thing when they were young. But they want to pretend (to their colleagues, to their kids, maybe even to themselves) that they didn't. And what better way to do that than to take it out on some poor girl whose only sin was growing up in a time where there are more cameras and an internet around?
We need a lot less sanctimony and a lot more "So he/she partied in college...but who didn't?"
Hypocrisy (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue isn't one of morality. The issue is that the vast majority of people do not follow the rules they espouse. That's why people hate the internet "memory." It exposes them for who they are, or at least who they used to be. The immediacy of information connects us with the past, and can help us make better decisions for the future. CIA coups used to be considered conspiracy theories, but now anyone can look at the source documents for themselves. News stories about what someone reportedly said are routinely dismissed, but a video of the same event makes refuting history much more difficult. In short, reality is much harder to dismiss for the people who are genuinely interested to find out what that is.
So, I'd rather not build in forgetting. I'd rather people learn to be more accepting of everyone and more skeptical of every asshole who wants to impose their morality on others. The ubiquity of distributed recording devices, and the network to freely share that media, is the most dangerous threat to the status quo since the scientific method, and for the same reason: it trades authority and mysticism for reality and results.
Re:the long view (Score:3, Insightful)
I realise this is all very well for me to say, but I've always known that this was the case and acted accordingly. On a simple level, I've never said anything online that I wouldn't say to my mother or I wouldn't be prepared to stand behind in future. There is no such thing as anonymity on the 'net, never has been. That's the reason why I don't have alt's. There isn't anything to gain.
I do recognise however that most of the non-geek audience won't have thought of this, and may be bitten, but them's the breaks IMO. The expectation of anonymity is no excuse for acting like an idiot. That said my hormones had already raged. Though Dr Aleks Krotoski does say that in the future, people who do not have a complete record, warts and all, will not be taken seriously, because they are not fully three dimensional people.
You are completely missing the point.
Most of us have gotten drunk at some point in time. Most of us have done something at least vaguely embarrassing at some point in time. Most of us have at least one photo of us doing something stupid that we aren't terribly proud of. None of that should preclude us from getting a job.
My wife went to the local county fair on Friday. They had a stage hypnotist. She volunteered. She was making a fool of herself on stage - dancing around like Lady Gaga, fighting non-existent birds, searching for her stolen belly button. There is video of the event. Is it OK for somebody not to hire her because she made a fool of herself? I'm sorry, but that just doesn't project the kind of professionalism that we expect here.
It doesn't matter if you're careful to censor yourself on-line, somebody else could post a photo of you doing something unprofessional. It really shouldn't matter if you're being unprofessional outside of work, because you're not at work.
The problem isn't that this lady got drunk... The problem isn't that a photo was taken... The problem isn't that the photo was posted to MySpace... The problem isn't that somebody else saw the photo...
The problem is that these folks based a hiring decision on what this lady did in her free time, rather than how qualified she was to do the job.
What's next? Only hiring folks that play D&D? Not hiring people who like Halo? Attend a Gay Pride rally and you're fired? Vote the wrong way and you're suspended for a week?
Re:Posting is forever (Score:5, Insightful)
However, to change the perception people have when they find that you don't have an un-scarred past seems to be a good and righteous thing to challenge.
We as a society have this idea that keeps getting trashed that there are people out there who are as good as we want them to be. In my 36 years of experience, I've found only a small handful of people who are completely honest about who they are and were. In general people try to practice this selective forgetting so that they can "reinvent" themselves.
Instead, why don't we just learn to not hype people to unachievable heights and realize they're as human as we are and made as many mistakes as we all did?
Speaking as a puritanical prick (Score:4, Insightful)
But hang on a minute. It isn't the puritanical pricks who are posting those photos; I personally would never post any picture of anyone in a public place without their permission (if it's evidence of illegality, go to the police.) It's...the people who "know how to have a good time". And who are the people who post inappropriate images out of a desire to bully or mock? Check. Perhaps someone needs a slight values reassessment.
Re:The media disagrees (Score:3, Insightful)
Beyond that drugs don't have a constructive use in society. At best they're benign and at worst they cause a lot of damage to people not directly involved.
Re:On the other hand.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd chock it up to the fact that drugs are not something which people with a healthy, fulfilling life do. I'm sure some libertarian is going to argue that it is essential liberty, but it's really not. People wouldn't take the risk of drugs screwing up their lives if they were living a life that they really valued. Papering over that with drugs really isn't something that's going to change that.
Re:The media disagrees (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forgiving without forgetting (Score:3, Insightful)
>Under those circumstances, I'd say you haven't been forgiven at all then. When you forgive someone you stop blaming them. They may still be responsible and you may still remember but you no longer harbor any ill will towards them.
But that only speaks on an individual basis. You're forgiven by the people in your life now - but the same picture haunting you twenty years down the line at a job interview is being assessed by people who saw it the first time five minutes ago. Because the incident is unforgotten - it needs to be forgiven over and over and over by everybody who becomes aware of it... for as long you live.
Re:Responsibility about who you are (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure. But for how long and for how much? A number of long term societal trends mean we're supposed to be responsible for everything we say and do forever and at great consequence. If we drink too much at a party and act like an ass, it's no longer enough to apologize and/or endure some humiliation; instead, if the incident makes it on the internet, we're supposed to give up forever any chance of achieving a position of responsibility, whether that be political office or gainful employment. A statute of limitations really isn't enough, and a "lighten up" law isn't likely to succeed.
Re:The media disagrees (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:you suffer from historical myopia (Score:3, Insightful)
Cyclical disasters and extinctions certainly occur, empires rise and fall; there are cycles to all things.
When all the people get dumb, rude and hopeless, it's nearly always an indicator that powerful societal shifts are just around the corner.
The human population as a whole has walked around many such corners during its time occupying this globe, and I see no reason to think that this process will overlook our current time. That some ancients noted the same patterns before their own societies eventually crumbled only lends credence to the OP's observations.
The difference today, is that our high-tech society allows for a speedier realization of the process outcome.
-FL
Re:Posting is forever (Score:4, Insightful)
In the future where everything is recorded on the internet forever, you will count yourself lucky if you find a single job applicant who ONLY has pictures of them drinking beer on the internet. Who do you think you're going to hire instead? There is no "Microsoft product" for you to buy in this analogy.
Re:Responsibility about who you are (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:On the other hand.... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are so many reasons to do any particular action in life. Several people I know who use drugs do so to achieve altered mental states - call it self-exploration. So where do you draw the line? Should I look down my nose at you papering over your life because you drink coffee? Does intent matter?
People should stick to determining what is most healthy and fulfilling for their own lives & let others do the same.
Re:Posting is forever (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I'm saying that that's the logic behind not hiring people because there's pictures online of them drinking beer, smoking marijuana, or in general having a life. Of course it is disgustingly cowardly, but that's humans for you.
And there are quite a lot of people who find that a desirable outcome: after all, if an ex-convict turns back to crime, that is evidence that he was a bad person all along, and thus helps them divide the world into good people - themselves and those they like - and bad people - everyone else.
Of course this makes them very bad people indeed, far worse than most convicts, and of course they also realize that at some level, but that's simply their cue to continue repeating the "convicts are subhuman monsters" mantra with all the more fervor, to make themselves look better by contrast, yet actually becoming worse and worse.
Actually, I kinda doubt it. It takes outright psychopathic behaviour - rape, murder, beating your kids, that sort of thing - to get more than annoyance out of me.
And what I was trying to say is that most of us aren't open, honest or willing to take risks for the benefit of strangers.
Yes. On the other hand, if I, Joe PHB, hire him, and he screws up in any way - which is inevitable, he being a mere mortal after all - and it comes out that I knew that he was less than perfect in every way, why, it must have been my fault! I should had hired the candidate who I didn't know was imperfect!
Of course this is absurd. It's Just World Fallacy - basically, the claim that world is just, therefore if anything bad happens to you it must have been your own fault somehow, therefore if we can't find anything else we'll blame it all on you drinking beer while in college - meeting ass-cowering. However, it's no more absurd that many other things companies have done in their quest for efficiency (such as firing the worst-performing 10% of their employees each year), so should it really surprise you that this happens? Especially in the current climate where everyone is deathly afraid of losing their job, knowing full well that the job market is never going to recover?
Exactly. So when shit hits the fan, I can claim that I knew nothing about it, thus covering my ass when my boss is looking for someone to blame to cover his.
Of course that means that our employees will spend more time covering up any weaknesses and slips than doing actual productive work, but hey: that's efficiency - it's the capitalist way!
Once again: this has nothing to do with common sense, and everything to do with Keeping Up Appearances. Cowardice and hypocrisy combined tend to produce rather spectacularly irrational outcomes.
Re:On the other hand.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Growing up with what I saw, I never wanted to be like them. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs (prescriptions, sure, but I tend to even refrain from tylenol and ibuprofen). I was 27 when I lost my virginity (partially through choice, I didn't want to have kids before I was ready, and partly because I'm like most slashdotters and am socially intimidated by women anyway. I also have an aunt that was a grandma at 32). I've even taken care of a severely disabled parent on my own since I was 21. I'm the first to admit that I have some rather deep psychological problems of my own, but I don't begrudge anyone that does want to drink or whatever. However, I will add that, despite what proponents say about it being victimless, pot abuse DOES affect the kids just like alcohol abuse does - not just in my own family, but watching a lot of family friends that use and how they treat their kids.
I tend to not judge people... and I've had a number of friends and acquaintances say that I'm the "coolest straight arrow they know." However, there is a contingent out there that hates people like me for some reason, most likely because by leaving the exceptions to the rule alone, they seem some type of dichotomy themselves that they feel makes them look bad. That doesn't just go for the drinking, I've had people tell me how wonderful they think it is that I take care of my dad and then, when I turn my back, they start trash talking me for making the sacrifices I have because they couldn't do it themselves; By tearing me down, they don't have to feel so bad about being more self-centered themselves. While they're the first to complain about feeling judged, they also tend to be the first TO judge.
Am I a saint? Absolutely not... in fact, I don't have too much good to say about myself. I suffer from Avoidant Personality Disorder, whereby I tend to pre-reject myself so others don't get the chance to do it for me. You can't do that unless you detest yourself at a pretty deep level. Still, I don't judge others and if I do, I still find ways that I'm somehow worse than them.