digital fingerprints
http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/0…
It’s of course inevitable that Tom Friedman would fall solidly under the spell of a book entitled “How.” The man is a human airport nonfiction table — he can’t help himself. Give him a single-word title with an overeager thesis and he’s set. But though wrapped in gauzy examples and odd rhetoric, what How appears to have taught Friedman is all too widely believed:
For young people, writes Seidman, this means understanding that your reputation in life is going to get set in stone so much earlier. More and more of what you say or do or write will end up as a digital fingerprint that never gets erased. Our generation got to screw up and none of those screw-ups appeared on our first job résumés, which we got to write. For this generation, much of what they say, do or write will be preserved online forever. Before employers even read their résumés, they’ll Google them.
Look: I am young people. I do Google folks. And you know what? There’s not much there. Most people don’t even come up. And certainly most screw-ups aren’t in online existence.
Gee, I’m glad I didn’t post to misc.survivalism when I was younger…
June 29th, 2007 at 10:09 am
You think that’s bad? Go Google “HTRN” – I’m like a bad rash on the intarwebs.. Probably half the hits out there past the first page or two are various posts I’ve made over the years…
And Now you can see why I never, EVER use my real name.. :)