The internet and the future

I was struck by a rather interesting thought the other day as I was contemplating youtube. Given that you can save the videos that people put up there and just re-upload them using your own account if they are taken down, it seems to me that once you put a video on youtube there's a chance it will be around the internet literally forever. I don't think this concept applies only to youtube either; Myspace, Facebook, Blogs, and virtually any other kind of media can be saved by someone. With videos of course the video itself can simply be saved, and for websites like blogs all archived versions of a page tend to automatically be saved by google and other search engines. With dozens of engines attempting to emulate google's success and probably dozens more in the future, I wouldn't doubt cached pages are something that's here to stay. Which means that even if a web page on a site is deleted or changed it is and will continue to be possible to see what was there before. That means that in twenty, thirty, even fifty or one-hundred years from now we may still be able to read the web pages of today. Perhaps we will get so good at archiving the net that they will just stay there forever.

But of course, what kind of implications for the future will any of that have? Well I for one have to think of political campaigns. In an age where the slightest off script remark or gaffe can be turned into a million dollar slander campaign against you, just how will having all of this old internet material around affect current and future generations of politicians? Using youtube as an example, consider the following individual. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ATY9MP0Gs&feature=related) His original video was taken down, but it had over 1 million views and tens of thousands of comments. So I think it's safe to say that video is going to be around for a while. Knowing that, I have to wonder just whats going to happen to that kid if he ever wants to run for public office. Would his campaign even be able to get off the ground, or would it be stopped as soon as it started by the release of the video? I doubt his competitors would release it themselves or mention it publicly, but I can easily picture it mysteriously finding its way into the picture through attention given to it by third parties.

Of course the question must be asked, are average voters so immature that they would take something from twenty to thirty years ago and use it to make a judgement about someone? Would they allow such an old video to obfuscate the present? If they are egged on properly, then I believe yes. So then, has this individual just limited some of his options in life by making a childish mistake of his youth? It's certainly possible. All of us make infantile mistakes in one fashion or another when we our young, but until now we've had the good fortune of doing so in relative obscurity. Now however because of cell phones virtually anyone has access to a pocket camcorder. Are all of the kids growing up around that kind of scrutiny going to be hurt decades later just because they made a few simple mistakes of youth that get caught on film?

Maybe none of this would ever be an issue if people weren't so judgmental, but that is not the world we appear to live in. Not only are people quick to judge but they also tend to give more weight to things they can see first hand then to things they are told on the basis of trust. It also doesn't help that we live in a political landscape where shaping other peoples opinions is a million dollar industry. I have no doubt in my mind that if the above mentioned youtube video was given to the proper individuals and they were told to politically ruin the creator, that it could be done. Then again maybe the world will turn out differently then I am imagining. Maybe the general populace will become desensitized enough to propaganda and misinformation to be skeptical of it rather then overly trusting, and perhaps in the future we will all become less judgmental. I suppose only time will tell.

Vocab: Infantile:

1. (2) childish, infantile

(indicating a lack of maturity; "childish tantrums"; "infantile behavior")

2. Obfuscate: make obscure or unclear