Google 1981
Dec. 14th, 2001 02:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterIn recent news, the popular search engine turned USENET archive Google.com has brought online some extremely far-reaching archives of USENET, stretching all the way back to May 1981.
That's right--1981. Bet a lot of you didn't even know there was an Internet that long ago, did you? I would have been about 8 years old at time time, and even Enter Magazine would still have been some time in the future for me. Twenty and a half years of USENET history. From before the rise of Windows, from before the Challenger disaster, from long before the World Wide Web, and from even longer than most people outside of universities and government researchers had heard of it. And from about twelve years earlier than even I had found my way onto it at last.
I've found what appears to be my own first USENET post--from a few minutes before 11 a.m., February 23, 1993. I actually suspect it might not have been quite the first, as it's an announcement about a fanfiction that I had already started a while before--but the search engine interface on Google is kind of cantankerous, and I think it will do. It's certainly early enough.
Some people are aghast that things they wrote so long ago might still be lurking out there to haunt them. They see some of the things they wrote and cringe, or they fear that they might affect their employment prospects if potential employers think to do a search on their names. I think this is a little silly--frankly, if a potential employer is going to be so swayed by what he might read of my USENET postings, which I do on my own time, about my own interests . . . then I really wouldn't care to work for him. I may cringe when I look back on some of the stuff that I wrote, but I don't think that any of it reflects really badly on me. I stand by every flamewar, every random discussion of inconsequential trivia, everything.
But then, I've always been careful about what I said. From the very beginning, it seems to me now, it felt like common sense that if I said something in public, sent it to a place where who knew how many people could read it, the chances were that it would be read by someone who might one day be in a position to have some effect upon my life--and perhaps that it might stay around to haunt me. And this was before I ever got any access to the Web. Once search engines started popping up, and I started seeing where searching on my (and others') names got me, it only became reinforced.
One friend of mine found that, of all the writing he'd ever done on the Internet and in other places, the most hits on his name were connected to a piece of Vampire the Masquerade fanfic that he had sent "to a mailing list with about 8 people on it." One of them had put it on a website. About 90% of the Alta Vista hits at the time he searched on it . . . led to this story. Even now, years later, after he's had a web journal, done some writing for a gaming company, and done a lot more stuff like that . . . that particular fanfic is still the fifth link when I search his name on Google's websearch.
I learned my lesson well--so if I were to post anything on the Internet that I didn't want people associating with my name, you can be darned sure I would do it anonymously. It seems kind of funny that some people, after writing something where everyone could read it, are now upset because people still can. Of course, they can always exercise the option to have Google excise their posts from its archives, but I hope that not many people do--an archive is useful precisely because of its completeness.
I think, and have always thought that such archival is a neat idea. What can geneology really tell you in comparison to this sort of record? Let my descendants, if I ever have any, find out about their ancestor by reading the things I've written and left behind from day to day--my footprints in the sand of cyberspace. Let future historians be able to put me exactly where I belonged. I don't have anything to hide.
That I know of. Maybe if I read some more of my old posts, I'll change my mind. ;)
That's right--1981. Bet a lot of you didn't even know there was an Internet that long ago, did you? I would have been about 8 years old at time time, and even Enter Magazine would still have been some time in the future for me. Twenty and a half years of USENET history. From before the rise of Windows, from before the Challenger disaster, from long before the World Wide Web, and from even longer than most people outside of universities and government researchers had heard of it. And from about twelve years earlier than even I had found my way onto it at last.
I've found what appears to be my own first USENET post--from a few minutes before 11 a.m., February 23, 1993. I actually suspect it might not have been quite the first, as it's an announcement about a fanfiction that I had already started a while before--but the search engine interface on Google is kind of cantankerous, and I think it will do. It's certainly early enough.
Some people are aghast that things they wrote so long ago might still be lurking out there to haunt them. They see some of the things they wrote and cringe, or they fear that they might affect their employment prospects if potential employers think to do a search on their names. I think this is a little silly--frankly, if a potential employer is going to be so swayed by what he might read of my USENET postings, which I do on my own time, about my own interests . . . then I really wouldn't care to work for him. I may cringe when I look back on some of the stuff that I wrote, but I don't think that any of it reflects really badly on me. I stand by every flamewar, every random discussion of inconsequential trivia, everything.
But then, I've always been careful about what I said. From the very beginning, it seems to me now, it felt like common sense that if I said something in public, sent it to a place where who knew how many people could read it, the chances were that it would be read by someone who might one day be in a position to have some effect upon my life--and perhaps that it might stay around to haunt me. And this was before I ever got any access to the Web. Once search engines started popping up, and I started seeing where searching on my (and others') names got me, it only became reinforced.
One friend of mine found that, of all the writing he'd ever done on the Internet and in other places, the most hits on his name were connected to a piece of Vampire the Masquerade fanfic that he had sent "to a mailing list with about 8 people on it." One of them had put it on a website. About 90% of the Alta Vista hits at the time he searched on it . . . led to this story. Even now, years later, after he's had a web journal, done some writing for a gaming company, and done a lot more stuff like that . . . that particular fanfic is still the fifth link when I search his name on Google's websearch.
I learned my lesson well--so if I were to post anything on the Internet that I didn't want people associating with my name, you can be darned sure I would do it anonymously. It seems kind of funny that some people, after writing something where everyone could read it, are now upset because people still can. Of course, they can always exercise the option to have Google excise their posts from its archives, but I hope that not many people do--an archive is useful precisely because of its completeness.
I think, and have always thought that such archival is a neat idea. What can geneology really tell you in comparison to this sort of record? Let my descendants, if I ever have any, find out about their ancestor by reading the things I've written and left behind from day to day--my footprints in the sand of cyberspace. Let future historians be able to put me exactly where I belonged. I don't have anything to hide.
That I know of. Maybe if I read some more of my old posts, I'll change my mind. ;)