Have you ever regretted of posting some photos on Facebook? Have you ever got in trouble because you left some curses on Twitter? If not, congratulations! You have not encountered the problems that large amounts of people worry about. Recently, Jeffery Rosen publishes an article "The Web Means the End of Forgetting", discussing impacts of personal information being public which are caused by the Internet everlasting memory. In fact, as the use of the Internet, especially social networking sites, prevails in these years, troubles caused by the cyberspace appear more and more frequently. Rosen's article just appears in time to attract public attention on these issues of our unbearable past.
In his essay, Rosen starts with the example of Stacy Snyder, who was denied her teaching degree by her university only because an unprofessional photo posted on her MySpace page showing her drinking in a party. Rosen believes Snyder is just one of the victims in our digital age. He questions how we are able to live best in this world with limited private space and, according to his words, "where the Internet records everything and forgets nothing." Rosen then describes another example in business area. According to a survey by Microsoft, An enormous amount of U.S. firms ask their human-resource professionals to do background researches on their potential candidates by searching in the Internet and to examine the candidates' online behavior. Rosen asserts that the Internet's retentive memory is difficult for us to fade our past and to start fresh.
The story of Stacy Snyder warns us not to post inelegant photos that may influence others and ourselves. The reason Snyder loses her teaching degree is logical and reasonable. When I read her example, the first thing on my mind is the shock of her students. What impression will Snyder make on her students after they saw her photo? They may think their teacher is a drunkard.
