Young will have to change names to escape 'cyber past' warns Google's Eric Schmidt

[pollyannaish]

Telegraph:

Eric Schmidt suggested that young people should be entitled to change their identity to escape their misspent youth, which is now recorded in excruciating detail on social networking sites such as Facebook.
"I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," Mr Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal.


In an interview Mr Schmidt said he believed that every young person will one day be allowed to change their name to distance themselves from embarrasssing photographs and material stored on their friends' social media sites.
The 55-year-old also predicted that in the future, Google will know so much about its users that the search engine will be able to help them plan their lives.



He suggested, as an example, that because Google would know “roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are”, it could remind users what groceries they needed to buy when passing a shop.

Worth reading the whole thing

[pollyannaish]

Hahaha! Great observation from the comments section. Reminds me of the guy that filed off his fingerprints and ended up with the most identifiable fingerprints of them all.

 

 

GENIUS !!!

 

1/ Live TOTALLY IRRESPONSIBLY.

2/ When you FINALLY need to get a REAL job, just CHANGE YOUR NAME.

 

...Of course, people with NO HISTORIES associated with their NEW names will set off the same alarms as WOULD HAVE BEEN set off by the actual histories associated with their REAL names.

 

That said, these people scare me. Not because of the main comments, but because they actually believe THIS:

 

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

 

Uh....no.

[Valin]

Eric Schmidt suggested that young people should be entitled to change their identity to escape their misspent youth, which is now recorded in excruciating detail on social networking sites such as Facebook.

 

 

Never say or do anything on the net that would not say or do standing in a town square at high noon.

[Sanguine]

If my young niece is any example, they will have to change their names, maybe go into a sort of "young and stupid protection plan". Of course, the family always remembers. I'm just so so glad that social networking sites didn't exist when I was that age. And, that my family is forgiving and forgetful.