In my footsteps?
My daughter informed me last weekend that she reads my blog. She is ten. My first reaction was panic, just what did I write here? I could not remember. I knew it had to be somewhat tame because I have always been somewhat cautious with what I post, but not always. Did I write things here that she should not read? Fortunately the answer to that is no, but it opens a whole new world of issues and means I will have to be more conscious about self-censure.
I’m a creature of technology. I am one of the group that got to play/work with early versions of what is now the Internet while in college. The desktop PC also emerged while I was in college. Computers and networking became my passion and my career. I worked and consulted for many of the companies that were instrumental in helping chart the course that technology and the Internet took.
Unfortunately this means that I have left tracks all over the place…for decades. My Google return is near 50,000 results and that is just when searching my name, other ways to search me yield even more results. While much of that is regular techie stuff (dev projects I was involved in, interviews I have given, papers I have written, etc.) some of it is forum banter. I fear she may find some of me in the midst of a flame fest that was not too flattering. Or more likely stumble across the vile spewed against me by those in the past who have been angry that I would not term an account for legal speech. I guess we’ll have to cross that bridge as it comes.
I suppose it was inevitable that my daughter would come to find me this way. In this world of rapidly advancing technology most people will have a rich Internet life. It just happened earlier than I expected. Fortunately I stayed fairly tame in my online identity. The same can’t be said for many of today’s college crowd and their facebook and myspace tell all lives. What will happen thirty years from now when their ten year old child hits the net and sees some of the things mom and dad did. Privacy is important for many reasons, manage your online identity properly, the Internet never forgets.
It still remains to be seen how much of me is in my daughter. I see a lot in her already that reminds me of me at her age. So perhaps she’ll follow the course I charted. Maybe even eventually taking over the reigns of the business. Perhaps one day she’ll explain to me a way she’s going to make Packetderm’s services even better from the seat I once sat in…ok, probably not, children rarely follow the parent’s footsteps (and besides, she wants to be a vet-singer-babysitter-medical biller), but we can all dream, can’t we?
