Go on ... google yourself
There has been an interesting run of discussions about Internet research, ethics and the private/public debate over the last week or so on the AIR-L mailing list. One participant mentioned that mailing lists, like newsgroups etc, are in many cases archived on the Internet outside of the delivery mechanism, therefore even messages posted to a closed and moderated mailing list become 'public' through archiving. And, even if you didn't know about AIR-L (or any other m/list for that matter), putting someone's name in as a query on google.com could potentially retrieve their postings.
So who am I? What does googling 'kylie veale' say about my Internet past? I found it amusing to see what things I posted back in 1996, and whose been talking about me and my interests (not what I’ve posted myself). Here is a selection of what I found.
Try googling yourself ... back to top
Go on ... google yourself was posted 5/21/2004 10:08:50 PM AEST |
There are currently 1 comments for
Go on ... google yourself:
Hi Kylie, It might be a bit egotistical to admit, but I regularly check how my name Googles, primarily to see how the digital world out there probably views me. Googling is one thing ... but of equal interest (or concern), for me at least, is when Google buys up archives and suddenly you're Googlable in different ways. When Google's 'Groups' search was set up, suddenly anything posted to Usenet groups by me was searchable! Arguments in a film criticism group about specific film reviews, or in a science fiction group about the status of gay characters in future settings are all now (and, presumably, for the immediate digital future) accessible to anyone who looks. I never thought of this when I was using Usenet as an undergraduate. Now I'm a lot more careful with comments and writing online ... I wonder, does the fear of Google make me less honest or less willing to express myself in archivable forms? I think it just might!
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