The Web Means the End for Forgetting

In the article, “The Web Means the End for Forgetting” by Jeffery Rosen argues how the internet is a memory system, and regardless of deleting your “past” there is always going to be a way to find it on the internet. Rosen makes a strong point by providing creditable sources, interesting examples, and significant statistics that relate to how harmful posting personal matters on the internet. Rosen implies his credibility by using valid sources to make his argument. For example, Rosen introduces how the Library of congress recently announced that they will be permanently storing twitter posts from 2006 and on. He also uses a quote from Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, a cyber scholar, stating, “Our society accepts that human beings evolve over time, that we have the capacity to learn from past experiences and adjust our behavior.” This is one of the reasons why our society uses the internet as one big memory bank. Rosen included a court case from 2008, when a student was denied her teaching degree for posting a party picture of herself. Even though she claimed this was against her freedom of speech. Furthermore, Rosen involved emotional appeal to his argument by using examples from individuals who are cautious of what is posted online. For example, due to possible impacts post may have on people’s reputation they may reject tagged picture. A lady in Manhattan told New York Times, “You have movie star problems, and you’re just a person”. Rosen also backs up his argument using statistics as well. He gives examples, such as 22% of all internet users spend 500 billion minutes a month on facebook, to give reasoning to his audience why we should care. Giving a statistic like this, notifies his readers that social networking is now a big community, which makes his arguments important to recognize.