Sunday, November 9, 2008
Permanent Record
This radio clip talks about how people cannot avoid the presence of online profiles and how they cannot fully control what is included their own. A woman named Nazanin Rafsanjani comes on the show and talks about a letter she wrote when she was nineteen to Americas response to 9/11. She is from Iran and talks about how she did not like America’s response to 9/11 but cannot side with Iran and therefore stands by the innocence of our country which was so brutally attacked. This letter was posted on www.irannian.com and she does not like the fact that she cannot control the fact that this will personally be attached to her permanent online profile. She considers herself a private person and asked for it to be removed but they refused to do such a thing. She said that she was just a teenager and thought that it would only be posted for about a week and then disappear, but it was a much bigger deal than that and she is still dealing with the consequences. I think it is a little unfair that someone who later regrets something they say cannot do anything about it because it is now permanent and they are then forever stuck with that. At the same time I feel that it is a bit of a catch 22 because that person should know what they are getting themselves into when putting their opinion on the internet. People should be aware of how the internet works and should be careful with what they say. Yet this can also cause a state of paranoia to build. People can no longer trust to say how they feel without having it hanging over their head. Is this an issue of privacy? It can be argued either way, but regardless the internet is rapidly growing and people should be careful when dealing with it.
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2 comments:
I agree with Ryan as well as the radio clip talks about how we cannot avoid the presence of online profiles. By the problem that Nazanin Rafsanjani facing with, since she was nineteen until now, we should be aware on giving out our opinions or views. If what we wrote in the Internet is something that can create conflict, it might be threatening to us. For instance, as what Ryan wrote in his posting, that Nazanin posted a letter about how she disliked America’s response to 9/11 but cannot stand out for his country as U.S was brutally attacked and killing thousands of life. But, as she clicked on “Post” or “Send” button, there was nothing much that she can do with her posting but facing other world’s response willingly. The difficulty that she dealt with, should we take as a lesson. We must be careful of what we say or write as the internet is rapidly growing, but we cannot control it easily and what we say can be spread all over the world in a second.
Privacy is hard to maintain when dealing with the internet. As soon as you post something personal about yourself, it will be saved, recorded, and probably will be accessible to anyone who knows how to ask. This can be a very scary thing to deal with, as Nazanin found out. Posting things on the internet, even anonymously, can cause quite an uproar. Linking those postings with your own identity can have severe consequences down the road that you may not have been able to foresee at the time of posting. Maybe you said something about someone on Myspace when you were in high school, and 15 years later it is brought up when you go to a job interview. These kinds of things happen, and I believe they will continue to happen as information technology continues to advance. The internet is constantly changing, and as a result the way people look at and use the internet must change.
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