The real problems
are known as "stupidity" and hypocrisy and have little to do with "information overload".
I mean stupidity both on the individual level but mainly as part of a group of people. The arrest of the academic who wrote about LSD is a good example.
Then there is hypocrisy. As in black-listing someone from teaching because she had pictures of herself drank and dressed up as a pirate on-line. Practically every single student gets drunk at one time or another (you want to be a bit careful around ones that don't), and if you follow everyone in a sensitive social position (e.g. teacher, politician) around with a camera 24-hrs a day, chances are you'll be able to snap some pics that will end that person's career then and there. From TV preachers to politicians to beauty queens to profesors.
Hypocrisy is extremely deep-seated however. In highly litigious environments like the USA, hiring someone who just *might* be more of a risk in their job than someone totally anonymous carries a heavy financial penalty: the risk of being sued afterwards if the person concerned ever does anything wrong that would allow a lawyer to argue that the evidence you had available might have have prompted a more thorough scrutiny. Of course for 99% of all jobs _nobody_ is going to take the trouble to thoroughly screen a candidate, to hiring managers conveniently reject anyone out of hand on basis of an unfavourable Google search.Quick, efficient, and it doesn't leave a trace. Nobody cares if the rejected candidate is or is not suitable, it's all about managing risks.
People have come up with various defence mechanisms against that kind of venal sillyness.
The most important one is making sure that people don't get to see what you're up to in your personal life, and you don't enlighten them. It's the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in optima forma. The main pillar beneath this strategy is called "privacy": do your dirty stuff where strangers can't see it. You can let your friends see it because they know a lot more about you and are able to place what they do see in context. Strangers don't and can't.
Unfortunately that selective availability of information goes out of the window on the Internet. So yes, it's very dangerous to have *any* kind of information that isn't meant for public consumption out anywhere beyond your direct control. Including websites that are supposedly "guarded through passwords".
And no, "deleting" things isn't a good solution. Simply because there are tons of dirty laundry that organizations (companies, governments, evangelists, churches and commercial pseudo-churches) don't want you to know about, even if it's important to you. Making it easy to delete stuff about you that you don't like will automatically destroy the openness that the Internet brought us, and that's too high a price to pay.
So, too bad about those people who saw their careers destroyed by youthful indiscretion followed by hypocrisy from employers or their peers. They will learn. Perhaps society at large will learn too, you never know.
On the other hand there are numerous people who would really, really like to help you eliminate the scruffiness of the current internet. Every company who would rather have a locked-down internet service rather than the current free-wheeling net. They are only too happy to oblige, kill the freedom of expression on the Net, and come up with something like Compuserve was.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
