Persistence

One of the mental quandaries that I find myself cycling through is the issue of persistence on the Internet. The digital medium is no longer expensive or fragile as it used to be. It's just common practice to just transfer all of our electronic records from one hard drive to another, creating a perpetual transfer of information as time goes on. The Cloud is going to make this easier and more transparent to the end-user; your data is just always magically there when you need it. An invisible world-wide data repository encompassing everything.

So what's the problem with that? Inherently, nothing. It's actually a pretty cool concept, like the Library of Alexandria without the worry about fire. My hangup is that humanity has been pretty poor about choosing what to keep forever. Rather than choose, it's just easier to keep everything and why not? Storage is cheap and there seems to be no limit to what we can store.

Since we're keeping everything (and that includes corporations) we're saving all of our memories and actions -- both the good and the bad. We're human, we make mistakes and we eventually forget about them. The Internet will always remember them.

Case in point, as I was looking for a new job for the past few months I knew that employers were going to be looking at me. Not just the typical criminal background check (of which I don't have one), but beyond that... much beyond. There are certain things that I have to authorize for an employer to check or at the very least they will tell me that they will be looking into. Anyone getting a security clearance knows the drill. They'll interview friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc. That only gets you so far to knowing who you are as a person and as a potential employee.

Thanks to the Internet and the vast data that's being kept, there's all sorts of information on me... posted by me! And it goes back... way back. Try this for an exercise. Find the earliest post you made on the Internet. There's an interview online with me when I worked at Ensemble Studios in '97.

I happen to pre-date the World Wide Web by a few years. I was dialing up BBS' back in 1985. (Rent "Wargames" sometime and you'll get a good idea of my nerdness.) On a whim, I did a search for posts written by my old BBS SYSOP, Malcolm Petcher. He died many years ago, but I'm was able to find posts written by him as far back as March 27, 1986... just when I first met him! (Note: having my twenty year high school reunion and finding these posts are overloading my nostalgia brain centers.) I know he wouldn't mind me using one of his messages to make a quick point.

This particular post he said "I can see the benefit of having the British MoD allowed to validate compilers, but I see no reason for them to establish their own validation suite. That's
courting disaster." If Malcolm were alive today and looking for a new job in the Defense Industry, could a potential employer find this statement? If so, what would he think? Would he consider the context and the date? How would this impact his chances for employment?

Anything you say or write can be brought back against you if you're not careful. I know. I've done computer forensics for companies. People are always surprised that the email they thought was private was always being stored on the server. I think I learned a healthy sense of paranoia from my cousin, who I always considered to be a fairly elite hacker in the 80's. I've always had a healthy respect for "The Man" and had an emergency plan in case a black paneled van pulled up outside of my house.

I know what and what not to post. I actually have people in my industry "listen" to what I say, so I have to be careful on not just what I post but how I post it. I can't go out and rant "All users of Software Brand X are idiots!" Especially if one day the only people hiring is the people that make Software Brand X. Innocuous things on Facebook like promoting a political candidate or taking a stance on a particular issue could affect you.

It's a delicate balance to maintain. You have to be accountable for what you write. I actually prefer that over anonymous posts. (That'll be another blog post for later.) We shouldn't be afraid to use free speech, but what we say does come at some sort of price. It's something I'm teaching the kids to use now so it won't potentially come back to haunt them later.