Back in the mists of time when the Internet was young, we used to share a piece of advice with friends and clients which could be roughly phrased as 'don't write anything on the Internet with your name attached that you wouldn't be happy to see on a billboard near your house'. There were many variants of the same advice such as 'don't put anything on the Internet that you wouldn't be happy for your grandmother to see on the front page of her local newspaper while drinking her morning coffee', and so on. The message was that nothing can ever really be effectively removed from the Internet, and statements made may well come back to haunt you at some unspecified point in the future.
This was all long before social networks and nymwars, and a parade of mildly salacious stories about people losing jobs or not being hired in the first place because they'd posted opinions or pictures online that marked them out as being 'not a good fit' or whatever the euphemism du jour was. This resulted in people being somewhat more cautious in what they posted online and who they allowed see it, which was a good thing. A vague understanding of the permanence of things on the Internet became ingrained in the collective consciousness.
This week we're seeing the reverse of that, that plenty of things on the Internet are far from permanent, and that the Tories might be able to take away your lovingly curated lists of recipes because recipes on a website are a projection of soft imperialist power – no, I've no idea how Osborne got there either.
The Internet, a land of transient permanence, in which the bad things can hang around forever while many of the good things go away.
TL;DR Always keep a local copy.
- 'BBC climbdown over online recipes after public outcry'
- Aunties Recipes
- Obligatory change.org petition
Worth Pondering
Eye Candy
Totally Confused
Cell phone tower trees, blown away, Hello Woorld!, stupid random delivery app and intergenerational mobility.
Yours etc., @loughlin
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