Imagine Blogs

Well, we know that we all have our biases. And sometimes it is hard to draw a distinction between what you write and what you believe in.

Remember those days when blogs were the new kid on the block? When people wrote about their bosses and how much they hated their job? And as a result got fired (when the boss found out).

If you were a facebooker from the early days, like me, you know before everyone, their mother, grandfather had a facebook account, you might remember that there was a lot of privacy then.  (It was such an elite group back then, I remember the uproar when they opened it to high school students, but I digress). Now, not so much.

Someone, a healthcare aide, had this for his status update: "Work is so lousy today." His boss saw it, and determined that this lack of morale affected his job; so the good chap was written up.

Obama's Potential  Staffers Get Extra Vetting

Yesterday Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination to Obama's cabinet. It had nothing to do with Facebook, email, or the net for that matter. But his tax evasion scandal was proving to be an embarrasment for the candidate of change. In his defence Daschle says that he did not know about the gift tax . He had received a car as a gift, and failed to claim taxes.  There were other mitigating factors to his withdrawal including his close relationship with companies and lobbysits in the healthcare sector.

So it is no surprise that in this internet age of ours, Obama is asking all who will work in his administration to list

all aliases or ‘handles’ they have used to communicate on the Internet,” everything they’ve written, “including, but not limited to, any posts or comments on blogs or other websites,” links to their Facebook or MySpace pages and any potentially embarrassing “electronic communication, including but not limited to an email, text message or instant message.

Will they remember? How, pray, will they do this? Can you remember every comment you have made on the net? Perhaps, every post that you have written, you might remember that.

And as this commentator at the Salon says,

But the imperative to disclose every Internet alias you’ve ever used? Uncomfortable. Unexpected. And more than a little ironic. The grassroots campaign that was incubated — and largely won — on the Internet has now assumed the role of moral groundskeeper, parsing and judging the online behavior of the generation that launched it.

Watch your webtrail!