If digital data never dies, we better learn to forget

"We should probably start accepting the idea that when we were young we all did and said stupid things - and cut ourselves some slack", says Dan Gillmor, author of "We, the Media". It was over lunch the other day at the Aula conference in Helsinki and we were discussing the idea that the digital world is increasingly shadowing the real world, and that shadow, once it appears in one's life, may never go away.

To the point: our political system is built on an industrial-era information context, and that makes it unfit for the digital era. Consider: in ten or fifteen years many people entering political life will be those that entertain today personal blogs and pages on social networks such as MySpace, where they often share opinions, views, and very intimate details of their daily life in shocking details. In 15 years, one of them will be running for mayor and another for a parliamentary seat and so on (this applies also to job searches and to a larger social context, by the way) and out there there will be many embarrassing leftovers (or more) about them, which they willingly posted on the Internet.

Sure, we can hit the "delete" button, erase files and take down websites, even physically trash computers. But digital data has this most annoying attribute of being tendentially indestructible. In the journey between our laptop and the blog, data transits through many routers; in the trip from our outbox to a friend's inbox, e-mail does the same; backups are made; CDs and USB keys are all over; friends (and foes alike) copy and re-post and excerpt and re-mix; aggregators aggregate; Internet archives "photograph" the Web at regular intervals to keep copies; etc.

As John Battelle so rightly puts it: "We're living online, but have yet to fully realize the implications of doing so. One of those implications is that our tracks through the digital sand are eternal".

That's why, as Dan Gillmor suggests, we need to start working on cultural and social "forgetness" - he did not use that word, but the idea is that if you said or wrote or did something stupid in the past, unless it's criminal it should not come back to haunt you. Or else, it will be very difficult to maintain a functioning political system.

[tags: aula2006 aula06 Dan Gillmor  John Battelle]

Comments

[ueli]

hi bruno. welcome to our daily family desk discussion (since my son has started his blogs)... obviousely, the cultural shift has no chance to keep pace with the technical one (but that, we knew). i doubt there is any chance 15 years will be enough. so, i better help my son in keeping his blogs somehow presentable. great collateral effect: i get fit in junior's sms & keyboard grammars :-)

[translucy]

We have to learn to _forgive_, not to forget.

Forgives-ness not Forget-ness

[BG]

We probably need to forgive more often, too. But in this case, I did mean: forget.

[translucy]

Bruno,

and I did mean _forgiveness_

On june 14th you mentioned how you discussed the social stigma resulting from enterpreneurial failure with Clay Shirky at the Aula 2006 conference in Helsinki.

Do you think social stigma of failure is reduced because people _forget_ that someone just has gone bankrupt?

And think of the people with whom you enjoy trusted relationships in either family or business. Do you _forget_ where they failed and what their weaknesses are or do you rather _forgive_ these weaknesses and act in way as to compensate for them?

I do agree though that "ignorance on purpose" can play an important role too, especially in close partnerships - in business just as much as in family: In all those cases where "to forgive" just seems impossible.

[Pedro Custódio]

Hi Bruno,

in fact if, we can also see the appearance of a new form of politics, on which it might be more interesting to discuss the political matters rather than personal side notes. Many times, here in Portugal the most important discussion passes along side a more "flashy" one, like where has someone been or not.

It just a thought...

Personally I tend to look to the things I write about as way of loud thinking, and although I do write opinions I might in the future regret, the truth is that most of them are many times the result of an open conversation (blog comments) for instance, so it's only reasonable that I might come to different conclusions and opinions in the future about that same subjects. To me having the ability to be censured in realtime and have it saved somewhere is kind of liberating... but its just a personal experience I do know people who came across a much darker side of this of course...