The past may come back to bite you...

There's a sign on the window by my office door that points out that I'm not young enough to know everything (kids read it sometimes, and go, well, of course...)...and yet sometimes you see the bulletproof young heading towards disaster - or at least, problems - assuming they're teflon-coated, when you know they aren't.  Internet privacy's one of those problems.

In The Web Means the End of Forgetting, (NY Times) Jeffrey Rosen discusses how publication of information about individuals can influence present circumstances, future prospects, eliminate opportunities.

We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.

Worth reading.  One to share with colleagues, students and children.

Cheers

Ruth

PS. if the lemon tree in your garden is utterly ignored except when you can pick fruit from it, does that benign neglect qualify it for 'organic' status?  If so, today's lemon cupcakes with chocolate icing had organic lemon zest in them... Hurrah for a cupcake Monday!