Internet forum cripplefights and your descendants
Discussion
There is no doubt that the internet is an astonishing resource essentially still in its infancy. Whatever is 'put out there', potentially and increasingly stays out there.
In researching various aspects of my now aging (but perfect) E46 M3, I have frequently been directed to threads on internet forums dating back to the early 2000's/late 90's. The posters have probably long since forgotten about those threads and their posts and entered new stages of their lives for better or worse that would make their words back than as alien to them now as those shared over a pint with a mate in their youth. Some of them may well have died. And that got me thinking.
Data storage capacity isn't really an issue anymore. That means that things uploaded to the internet these days will potentially remain from here on in for anyone including your descendants to retrieve by whatever means. Certainly, the way things are going that's going to be the case.
How would you feel about your great great grandchildren reading, laughing and perhaps gasping and crumpling with embarrassment at an internet cripple fight on Ye Olde Pistonheads between yourself and someone else's great great great grandfather? When you're 93 and your young grandchild chins off the Worthers Original you've handed them and asks you what a 't
t' is - well it's just a wierd thought. We've all looked at old photos of our family and used that accounts of our grandparents to lend them some sort of vague context, but your descendants will potentially be able to follow your life today in real time so to speak. And I suppose that will only increase as new capabilities, ideas, methods and ways of doing things appear in the future.
It's a mad thought. I guess there are issues in terms of sites staying online, or disappearing/going bust and taking their data with them. But the potential is there for this stuff to remain, at the very least in an archived state.
It makes for incredible possibilities for the people of tomorrow who decide to research their nearest and dearest. It's incredible really and a bit unsettling.
The world is a mad place. Exciting or frightening - I really don't know!
In researching various aspects of my now aging (but perfect) E46 M3, I have frequently been directed to threads on internet forums dating back to the early 2000's/late 90's. The posters have probably long since forgotten about those threads and their posts and entered new stages of their lives for better or worse that would make their words back than as alien to them now as those shared over a pint with a mate in their youth. Some of them may well have died. And that got me thinking.
Data storage capacity isn't really an issue anymore. That means that things uploaded to the internet these days will potentially remain from here on in for anyone including your descendants to retrieve by whatever means. Certainly, the way things are going that's going to be the case.
How would you feel about your great great grandchildren reading, laughing and perhaps gasping and crumpling with embarrassment at an internet cripple fight on Ye Olde Pistonheads between yourself and someone else's great great great grandfather? When you're 93 and your young grandchild chins off the Worthers Original you've handed them and asks you what a 't
t' is - well it's just a wierd thought. We've all looked at old photos of our family and used that accounts of our grandparents to lend them some sort of vague context, but your descendants will potentially be able to follow your life today in real time so to speak. And I suppose that will only increase as new capabilities, ideas, methods and ways of doing things appear in the future. It's a mad thought. I guess there are issues in terms of sites staying online, or disappearing/going bust and taking their data with them. But the potential is there for this stuff to remain, at the very least in an archived state.
It makes for incredible possibilities for the people of tomorrow who decide to research their nearest and dearest. It's incredible really and a bit unsettling.
The world is a mad place. Exciting or frightening - I really don't know!
Edited by Krupp Stahl on Sunday 12th July 19:55
This lady thought of that http://youtu.be/YfY1lfFu8j8 A message to her future grandchild.
It's just a modern day diary or journal, albeit an involuntary one.
I have posted my fair share of rubbish over the past 20 years, but nothing I would dread anyone finding. I tend to conduct myself online much the same as I do in person. I am not the sort to engage in foul language slanging matches in either place.
I have posted my fair share of rubbish over the past 20 years, but nothing I would dread anyone finding. I tend to conduct myself online much the same as I do in person. I am not the sort to engage in foul language slanging matches in either place.
Krupp Stahl said:
How would you feel about your great great grandchildren reading, laughing and perhaps gasping and crumpling with embarrassment at an internet cripple fight on Ye Olde Pistonheads between yourself and someone else's great great great grandfather?
Couldn't care less, I'll be dead in an eternity of oblivion, as will my great great grandchildren in no time.It is an odd idea but quite real idea.
I started writing my own website as the internet started to take off so I have always been somewhat wary of what I write in emails and fora as it is potentially all public and long lasting, though I didn't anticipate stuff written would last even this long.
My eldest son is embarrassed by things he wrote on Bebo (or similar) 16 or 17 years ago which can be found with little effort when he was a teenager. The email he had then doesn't exist any more and he has no chance of guessing username and password so it seems it will be unchanged forever.
It would be ok if everyone had more or less my experience, i.e. coming to it as an adult and starting from a business perspective, though I'm sure there's stuff I'd like deleted if I saw it again. Most people start as a kid and many will go on to positions where they would rather not have their history available to all. A sort of internet version of hoping you "smoked pot at college" won't come to light.
I started writing my own website as the internet started to take off so I have always been somewhat wary of what I write in emails and fora as it is potentially all public and long lasting, though I didn't anticipate stuff written would last even this long.
My eldest son is embarrassed by things he wrote on Bebo (or similar) 16 or 17 years ago which can be found with little effort when he was a teenager. The email he had then doesn't exist any more and he has no chance of guessing username and password so it seems it will be unchanged forever.
It would be ok if everyone had more or less my experience, i.e. coming to it as an adult and starting from a business perspective, though I'm sure there's stuff I'd like deleted if I saw it again. Most people start as a kid and many will go on to positions where they would rather not have their history available to all. A sort of internet version of hoping you "smoked pot at college" won't come to light.
Well if Google/Microsoft get their way and the sum entirety of human discourse and knowledge is available to be implanted directly into your mind in a nanosecond, essentially replacing the need for internal memory storage and the cloud truly becomes a ubiquitous governing knowledge base accessible at will without the need for complex external machinery we'll all know what we all know and have known - all the time.
I fear that for my offspring more than a little cringe at their dad/grandad slagging off degenerate UKIP voters on the internet.
I fear that for my offspring more than a little cringe at their dad/grandad slagging off degenerate UKIP voters on the internet.
JuniorD said:
If you have remained anonymous it won't matter a jot.
With a little bit of nous it can be very straightforward to find who someone is. I have done this a few times for other posters on this and other forums who I suspected weren't being quite what they were claiming to be, and lo and behold, they really weren't. In each case they thought they were being very secretive and anonymous, I didn't get into a slanging match and call them out, just stopped bothering to respond.When the aliens eventually arrive and pick over the decaying remains of our cold, dead data storage devices, they will deploy sophisticated reconstrucion techniques to piece it all together... and discover a large quantity of pornography.
In the meantime, I can't see anyone being that interested in their fore-fathers unless they did something unusual, and it would have to be very unusual. The sad fact is that nearly everything committed to data now is banal, duplicated a zillion times, and of only negligable interest during a short period where some time needed to be killed ( I include this post and every other)
In the meantime, I can't see anyone being that interested in their fore-fathers unless they did something unusual, and it would have to be very unusual. The sad fact is that nearly everything committed to data now is banal, duplicated a zillion times, and of only negligable interest during a short period where some time needed to be killed ( I include this post and every other)
yes my real name is citizensm1th and citizensmith jr and his kids will have a field day
I have never ever posted anything on the interwebs under my real name comes from being an early adopter and bulletin boards I suppose. plus a paranoid fear of the man and echelon and systems like it
I have never ever posted anything on the interwebs under my real name comes from being an early adopter and bulletin boards I suppose. plus a paranoid fear of the man and echelon and systems like it
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