I can never be a politician; I’m way too good at verbal gaffes. In an attempt to be funny or witty, I frequently manage to blurt out something wildly inappropriate, embarrassing myself and everyone around me. But there’s no a tape or video recorder to memorialize the moment.
The Internet is a different story: every blog post you write, picture you post, Facebook wall you write on — it’s all there “forever”. As time goes on, we’re all sharing more, building a “comet tail” of our content behind us. And some have learned the hard way that drunken party pictures may not help your career.
As the “blogging generation” grows up and enters politics, it’s going to get really interesting. Even with an entirely professional on-line persona, you can have expressions and opinions from the past that you regret.
It’s starting with the Obama administration questionnaire — what about that blog post from a few years back?
for a neat riff on this i recommend David Brin’s “Earth”
http://bit.ly/brin-earth
Brin is one of the big great science fiction talents of our time.
this novel from 1991 may be a bit dated in places but it describes a future earth where digital media is so pervasive and ubiquotous that crime has essentially been eliminated (though paranoia and anxiety have radically increased) because every human beings every move is recorded somewhere so police can relatively easily figure out exactly who did what and when for literally anything anytime