The Web Means the End of Forgetting

This NY Times article presents the claim that anything posted either accidentally or purposely on the internet will never be forgotten nor forgiven, and that should change. The author states that in today's society, 75% of recruiters and human-resource professionals are required to do online searches of candidates, and 70% of those companies don't hire based on those searches. This is re-illustrated into a real world situation in the story of  a young woman, who just before receiving her teaching degree, was seen in an online photo wearing a pirates hat with the caption "Drunken Pirate". As a result, the woman was denied her degree and kicked out of school. As absurd as this story may sound, the author says it best when he says, "...people aren't worried about fake information posted by others, they're worried about true information they've posted about themselves...". Perhaps, this is why people should be more forgiving about the internet reputations of their fellow peers. As Alessandro Acquisti, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, says, positive information is much easier to forget than negative information. There are many educated opinions by such authors, scholars, and professors as: Jonathan Zittrain, Paul Ohm, Daniel Solve, and Ryan Calo from Harvard, CU Boulder, George Washington and Stanford University emphasizing the theory that the internet should be more forgetful. There was also a story told about the Babylonia Talmud culture saying that this civilization believed that every word they spoken would fly to the heavenly cloud. However, had sinners properly asked God for forgiveness, their miscues could be forgotten. The author claims that should be the same treatment of internet users. As the "Drunken Pirate" misunderstanding, will show, only people that truly know our personalities and our norm can honestly judge us based off of our digital profiles. Although it is a very opinionated article, its large supply of Ethos and Logos supply a well organized argument to make the internet "forget" our minor miscues.