I was not alone in commenting on the recent New York Times story about expunctions. Here are some other posts about the same article from around the legal blogosphere.Michael Pinard’s post focuses primarily on housing and employment problems…

Well, as someone who has literally just, smile, posted a comment to a blog entry elsewhere in cyberspace that I’ve already realized is quite foolish, I couldn’t sympathize more!

Interestingly, however, this forces me to confront (at least one example of) my own particular foolishness, and challenges me to accept it, or to change it, or to deal with it in some way. I can assure you that this is uncomfortable, but I am not at all sure that it’s a Bad Thing per se.

Moreover, you can imagine a world in which people have a very different relationship to their own foolishness than they do today. This might be a very Good Thing.

I am imagining greater tolerance of, and empathy for (at least minor) indiscretions, and/or lapses of judgment. This would obviously mitigate the urge toward inhibition that you fear. It would also, arguably, be a step toward a more integrated sense of self, and sense of the world in which we live.

I definitely(!) don’t consider your concerns unfounded; but I do see these dynamics as being quite complex – and often running in multiple directions at the same time.

I think you are certainly right about the cultural shift and it dismays me somewhat. Tim’s “younger generation” understands at most in an intellectual way that “digital is forever.” But they do not “get” the true consequences of how permanent accessibility of small indiscretion or foolishness changes everything. We all need the space to be foolish largely unobserved and unremembered — especially as teenagers.

My bigger fear is that the real-world consequences of “digital is forever,” as they come into focus, will trigger a different cultural reaction down the line: instead of embracing a modicum of sensible discretion in communication and data exchange, might we swing the pendulum too far the other way to an inhibited discourse that thwarts the promise of much of “Web 2.0″?

Re “Web 2.0-type services:” The “social” aspects of Web 2.0 are worthy of consideration in this discussion. To wit, the upside of Web 2.0 lies not only in ready, platform-independent access to your data, as you point out, but also in the new avenues for communication and connection this software opens up.

 del.icio.us e.g., is an interesting alternative to search because it returns a) information you wouldn’t necessarily have known was out there, to search for, and b) information bookmarked [i.e., effectively "recommended by"] the particular userbase in question (in this case, del.icio.us). And the list of intriguing aspects to social software goes on (but not here! smile)

Also, re the “Members of the generation just behind [yours - and mine!], who have grown up reflexively creating and posting information online, [and who] are learning that digital is forever,” and the “problems [of] informational security and individual privacy” this is raising:

It’s important to remember – and arguably even to highlight, and emphasize – that we are talking not only about a change in the durability and accessibility of certain types of information, but also about a cultural shift in ideas about, and expectations of informational security, and individual privacy. The end game here is clear: “Reasonable expectations,” as they are understood and interpreted in our court rooms, are going to change. I assume that this is already happening in ways that I am unaware of; but I see it happening in a much bigger way “real soon now….”

Matthew