Digital tattoos

The generation coming up now is the first with the ability to publicly record anything they want to record. Wonderful as that is, it gives me pause. This coming generation will be the first that has to chew on this issue, and frankly I don’t envy them. There are a few things (come on, we all have them) that I might have written about, or felt passionately about, at 18 that I don’t want publicly available at 35, or 50. Much of our growth as people and as thinkers comes from trying out new ideas and making some mistakes. For many of us, that growth is preserved only in our memories or those of the people close to us, in letters, and in journals stacked in a garage. What we publish digitally, I think, is like a tattoo: it sticks, publicly, forever. There is a reason many of us are discouraged from getting tattoos until we reach adulthood. The tattoo of our favorite cartoon character may be awesome at 19, but not so much later on. I hope the web encourages a great deal of public thought and expression. It is also on us to be aware of the public nature and the longevity of what we put out there, considering that what we leave behind stays with us as the equivalent of a digital tattoo we thought we wanted, but actually didn’t.

Stephanie Schipper, in her very interesting reflection (which she wrote after reading Gin, Television, and Social Surplus by Clay Shirky).

We all have plenty of things we’ve published in forums, mailing lists, blogs, social networks, that we later just have to own, nothing more. I can trace contributions of mine on Google back to 1993, when there was barely a web to write on!

I don’t know whether this business of leaving a record will be worse for the young than for the old. Sure, a fifteen-year-old girl might look at her Facebook record at fifty and be horrified, or maybe not, it might turn out to be something wonderful, what do I know.

What is clear is that you can’t take back what you left on the record, and it’s better to own it.

It’s worth reading Stephanie Schippe’s postr, and reflecting on these matters. I don’t know what you think; maybe Pepe Flores is right, and with the Internet privacy is over…