Taking a break from fretting about the Internet to write about something else; namely, our summer routine.

Know why I am writing this here?  Because I wrote our routine on a piece of paper last year and have misplaced the piece of paper.  Last night I looked through every file because I wanted to prepare a new routine sheet for the twins, and I couldn’t find the original piece of paper.  I asked the ChickieNob how many Summer Bridge lessons I made them do last summer, and she gave me a somewhat gleeful smile as she said, “you don’t remember?”  I thought she was trying to get out of doing more work when she informed me that they only did one lesson per day.  But what did I know — I didn’t have the original paper to check.  Until I remembered that I wrote a post about our routine last year.  Oh, sweet blog, you’ve saved my ass too many times to count.

So I fine-tuned our routine from last summer based on what produced the best results as well as their age.  This is what we’re doing as third graders rising to become fourth graders:

• One lesson in their Summer Bridge books.
• Self-checking their Summer Bridge books and circling what they got wrong so we can go over those things later.
• The Daily 20 on Mathboard (an app).
• 20 minutes on the educational app page on the iPad.
• Read alone for 30 minutes.*
• Wolvog: 20 minutes of guitar practice; ChickieNob: 20 minutes of working on her book.

It takes about two hours, total.

I went with Summer Bridge again because I’ve been continuously impressed with their workbooks.  They feel like the elder statesman workbook lording over the newfangled workbooks.  Listen, Summer Bridge started the torture of millions of children by dumping school work on them in the summer.  Would I ever leave them for a new endeavour trying to cash in on the torturing children gig?  Summer Bridge has got it on lock.  Also, the workbooks are simple, straightforward, broken into nice bite-size pieces, and I trust it.  That’s why we went with Summer Bridge.

Mathboard is an app that we ended up buying because it was in an Apple commercial, and the Wolvog begs us for any app that he sees as being close to Apple, which is the source of all things beautiful.  It’s actually really a fantastic, straightforward app if you want to practice math skills.  You can set the type of problem the app generates, the range of numbers, whether you want it timed or untimed, and then the kid chooses their name under the main menu and starts the test.  Every day, the app spits out random quizzes based on my parameters, and I can go back and look at how they did on each quiz, increasing or decreasing the difficulty.  Again, it’s work they can do on their own.

They get 20 minutes on the iPad to work their way through any of the apps on the educational page that I set up with their input.  This summer, we have old favourites like Wonderopolis, Stack the States, and Aliens vs. Presidents.  And we’re in the process of adding new ones: Marble Math, Crazy Machines, and Symmetry School. (Can’t vouch for any of these yet.)  Plus they are allowed to play games that require logic or problem-solving, such as TwoDots, Monument Valley, or The Room.

They have to read by themselves for a bit, and then either practice guitar (Wolvog) or work on their book (ChickieNob).  During this time, I am doing all of my work.  And then we are free.

We’ll spend the rest of the time at the pool or beach or going on day trips or the library or hanging out with friends.  We need the down time.  We just need a few weeks where we have little scheduled, and we can island ourselves off and just breathe.  Because it has been a hard winter and spring, and I think we just need to step away from everything for a bit — or maybe I just need to step away from everything for a bit, and I’m taking them with me.

So what are you doing this summer?

* The twins are still in the same weekly peer writing/reading group.  We read one book together in the meeting, and one book at home (that we discuss at the meeting), and they’re working on a summer-long writing project with the other kids in the group.  So… that’s all education too.  But it’s mostly an excuse for me to make up the most obnoxious voices for the recurring characters in the books since I’m the one reading them aloud.

Last thoughts on the right to be forgotten.

So our first discussion was about interacting with huge entities such as Facebook or a government agency.  And the second discussion was really about distant relationships between two people: The concert-goer and Beyonce.  Me and my old college friend, John Smith.  People who may not know each other well, or at all.

Today we’re getting to the core: what about the people who love us?  The ones we interact with every day or who operate within our face-to-face world?  Our acquaintances and friends and family; the people who make up the circle that surrounds us.

Image: Jlhopgood via Flickr

*******

When a Jewish couple gets engaged, they sometimes have a te’naim, which means conditions.  Originally, it was a time for the two families to negotiate the details of the marriage, but Josh and I modernized the tradition and wrote our conditions or vows to each other on a piece of pottery.  We then smashed the pottery and gave a shard (in a glass box) to each member of our family.  We were symbolically giving them a tangible piece of our vows; of our relationship because, by getting married, we were including them on an intangible piece of our vows.

The reason pottery is broken at a te’naim is to symbolize the way the two families would be shattered — unable to be pieced back together in the same way — if the relationship between the couple were to change.  And it’s a reminder not to break the conditions; that trust can’t be put back together easily if people don’t uphold their end of the contract.

Marriages are obviously between two people, but we bring all sorts of people with us into our relationship.  I mean, I married Josh, but I got his parents and siblings and aunts and uncles and cousins.  I inherited his friends.  And the same thing happened in the other direction: he got everyone that I brought with me.  And then we started procreating so the kids were drawn into that circle, and we made more friends so all of those people have been sucked into the vortex of our relationship.

Does everyone else’s sun rise and set due to our marriage?  Of course not.  But haven’t you ever felt physically ill when a good friend tells you that their relationship is over?  A friend once told me that he was divorcing, and I remember sitting down on the edge of my bed, feeling gutted.  It wasn’t my marriage, and yet I felt personally invested in their happiness.  Part of my happiness was tied to their happiness.

Every time we interact with someone, grow close to them, it feels as if we hand them a piece of ourselves, just as I handed that shard of pottery to all of our family members.  Which means that once we start interacting with people, giving our love to our family and later our friends, we can never be completely whole.  Tiny pieces of us are scattered across the world, being figuratively carried by everyone who has come into our life.

Now add in social media.

Social media has done an amazing job making connections between two people who would never have met otherwise due to life circumstances.  For instance, Lori.  There was little chance that we would have met seeing that we live on two different sides of the country.  But we became super close after we met due to our blogs.  And now Lori owns a piece of my story, and I own a piece of hers.

And maybe you feel as if you own a piece of my story.  I certainly feel as if I own a piece of yours.  You’re not a blog.  You’re a human being who happens to write a blog.  I care about your story.  I email with you.  I joke around with you on Facebook.  I’ve cried with you.  Sometimes we step out from behind the computer and get together in the face-to-face world.  I’ve given away tons of little shards of myself — more than I maybe know since I have no clue how many people I’ve affected in this world.  And I’ve collected tons of little shards of other people — maybe more than they know since we don’t always have a clue how we’ve affected another person.

So… when it comes to that right to be forgotten, we can obviously stop writing our blog and slip away.  But what about all the people who read our story and interacted with us?  All the people who hold a figurative shard of my life, that I made a social contract with by reaching out in the first place.  Do they own our interaction or do I?  Do they have the right to write about me or mention old blog posts?  Or is it my right to pull away as much information as possible if I choose to be forgotten so I can shrivel away like the legs of the Witch of the East under Dorothy’s house?

Who owns the collective memories of our shared interactions?  I wrote the post, but you read the post: there are two sides to that experience.  If both of us own our interactions, do we have the right to upload any picture or make any statement online about another person, since we are presenting them as a person in our life.  In other words, we’re still the subject, and everyone else is a player on our stage.  How do you draw your social media lines when what we place online may be permanent in the case of certain sites and far-reaching?

Believe me, I’ve thought long and hard about this because what else am I doing with the Friday Blog Roundup beyond saying how something you wrote affected me?  How I carry that figurative shard of you that I collected by reading your post.  I make the choice — without asking you — to highlight your writing.  And maybe I’m overstepping a huge line when I look at it from this angle even if the act of blogging comes with the tacit permission to link.  You can remove your post, but now, by writing about it, it lives on the Internet unless I remove it too.  And then, really, neither of us can truly get rid of it because the Wayback Machine has probably already archived it.

Taking a break from fretting about the far-reaching Internet to say goodbye to Rik Mayall.  I read the news of his death last night, and then promptly turned on Drop Dead Fred.  Movies are sort of a rewind button, springing the dead back into life for a moment.

This was my favourite movie for the longest time, and my best friend and I watched it incessantly. I still quote from it to this day — “I am the pirate who doesn’t touch anything!” — and the movie still makes me cry. I think that’s why I loved it so much: it made me cry so hard.

Because maybe — just maybe — I could relate a bit to Phoebe Cates having imaginary friends of my own.

Thank you, Rik Mayall, for being so funny that you made me burst into tears.

So going back to discussing the book I’m reading without naming the book I’m reading. (I know — I’m annoying!  But as I said, email me if you want the name of the book before I’m ready to tie all of these questions to the book itself.)  Yesterday, we were talking about the idea of Internet entities or impersonal organizations “forgetting” us in the sense of having the ability to remove an account or information from the Internet.  I’ve been going in circles with this.

On one hand, the inability to remove the account or data is clearly within the terms of service, therefore, it’s user beware.  On the other hand, terms of service change.  When I first signed up for some of my accounts, I felt comfortable with the TOS.  Then the TOS changed.  Now I don’t feel comfortable with certain sites.  But removing my account is impossible.  Sure, I can delete the account, but all that does is limit my access and your access to my data.  It’s essentially like locking a stranger in my house.  Sure, other people can’t get into my house with the door locked, but I also can’t get into my house, and there is a stranger inside, rifling through my stuff.  When you look at it that way, deleting an account under those conditions doesn’t make a lot of sense.

So now there is another layer we need to discuss.

Sometimes people don’t choose to place their information on the Internet.  Sometimes, even if they didn’t open an account or post the information online, they get dragged onto the Internet.  There is always the chance that people could upload information or images about you, as was the case in the EU.  Should you be able to remove that information — be “forgotten,” so to speak?

So let’s spiral down into the question a little deeper, away from the powers that be — such as Facebook — and closer to the actions of individuals.

Image: Jlhopgood via Flickr

Let’s say that someone posted an embarrassing picture of you.  Your husband snaps a picture of you in mid-sneeze and uploads it to Facebook with the caption, “achoo!”  You should be able to have it removed, right?  I guess I’m starting with an assumption that no one is shaking their head right now and saying, “I may not love it, but that puppy is staying in place.”

We’re all on the same page with this, right?  We’d want the ability to remove an unflattering picture of ourselves that someone else uploads.

Then why did Buzzfeed refuse to remove Beyonce’s picture when asked by her publicist, and why did this become a major news story in 2013 rather than just have the images disappear?  Instead, the unflattering pictures were turned into a meme and spread even faster across the Internet where they are now so scattered that removing them entirely would be next to impossible.   And the media mocked Beyonce’s publicist for having the audacity to try to remove images.  People — again — decried this as Internet censorship.  That Beyonce was trying to rewrite reality by removing these online images.

Doesn’t Beyonce have the same rights as a private citizen?  I mean, yes, she’s a performer in public, but technically, a librarian also conducts her profession in a public space, unlike a school teacher, who works in a private space.  We know that it wouldn’t be cool to take and post grotesque pictures of a librarian, and yet it’s fair game to do so to a singer?  I don’t know.  That doesn’t sit right with me.  Rights aren’t a pu-pu platter.  We can’t say one job is public and the other is not when both are conducted in public spaces.

So if it’s okay to take pictures of Beyonce if we pass her on the street — and we sort of have that social contract that we can document our encounter with a public figure by snapping a picture — why is it not okay to start snapping pictures of my librarian when I go to return a book?  Because it’s not okay with the librarian.  And it is okay with Beyonce, even when she’s not in the middle of doing her job by performing.  Like when she’s enjoying down time with her family.  And by “okay” I don’t mean that it’s actually okay.  I just mean that paparazzi aside, I think most people wouldn’t think twice of snapping a picture of a celebrity without asking, but we do think twice about snapping a picture of a librarian without her permission.

And let’s just say that we did snap a picture of a librarian as we handed her our book, and her mouth was hanging open and her eyes were rolled back in her head because we caught her mid-sneeze.  We — for the most part — wouldn’t upload a clearly unflattering picture of a private citizen, but it’s clear from the Beyonce shots that we would if the person is a public figure…

We start going down a rabbit hole of what is private and what is public.  And who is a private citizen and who is public figure.  Are public figures ever private citizens when it comes to social media?  And social media, along with reality television, has blurred that line so much that it now isn’t clear where being a public figure starts and stops.  Is a contestant on the Bachelor a public figure?  Is a blogger a public figure?  Only if she has a certain amount of page views?  What about the Twitterati?  Facebook famous?

All I know is that the speed, agility, and anonymity of social media makes it very difficult to pull back your existence online once it gets started.  And you may not be the person who gets your own online existence started.

*******

I’m always shocked when I go on Facebook to seek out an old friend and I can’t find them.  I’ve been searching for one old college friend for years.  There are exactly three places he appears online.  He has a LinkedIn account.  He has a freestanding website where he has posted his resume.  And he has a property listing in his name.  No Facebook.  No Twitter.  No blog.  No Instagram.  At least, none under his real name.

Which is sort of the point, right?  We can be anonymous online.  He could be on Facebook and Twitter.  He could have a blog and post pictures to Instagram; all under a fake name.  And unless he told me about them, I wouldn’t necessarily find them without a lot of intense sleuth work.

There are dozens of reasons why someone would want to blog anonymously or go on social media under an assumed name, very few of them nefarious in nature.  One thing social media can do is provide you with a break from the past.  My college friend — let’s call him John Smith — doesn’t want to be found, and therefore, he can’t be found.  I mean, yes, he can be found in the sense that I wrote him via the email address he provided on his resume and we’re back in touch.  But, you know, you can be forgotten on the Internet if you try hard enough; forgotten by people who knew you in the face-to-face world as you disappear into the anonymity of the Web.  Until people remove that right.

Because there is nothing to stop me from creating a site called Where is John Smith, and post pictures of my old friend from college.  I could start a Facebook group asking people to help me in locating him.  I could tweet out memories of our college antics.  I have some fairly embarrassing pictures of John Smith, and the only thing stopping me from uploading them is human decency and a belief that even if I took those photos and own those photos, they aren’t my photos to upload.  It steps over a line I’m not willing to step over.  I may really really really want to find John Smith, but beyond asking mutual friends if they’ve been in touch with him, I would clearly be going against his wish to stay offline if I forcefully brought him online.

Even if I’m the fool and he is online under an assumed name, I would still be going against his wish to stay offline under his real name.  And that is legitimate too.

People rarely trespass and hurt feelings when they follow someone else’s lead.  But how many people actually think that long and hard when it comes to social media?  I know that I mess up all the time.  It is hard to be mindful of others 100% of the time, but the fact that the stakes are high on social media 100% of the time requires that we be mindful 100% of the time.  And it just can’t be humanly done.   Being mindful and careful is the antithesis of social media.  5000 tweets would stream by in the time it would take you to come to the conclusion of whether someone would want you to post about them online.  Social media doesn’t wait or slow down.

So where does this leave us?  With the thought that we can try to slip away from our present or our past, but social media is making it very very hard.

So I’ll wrap up this chunk of the discussion by asking how we determine who owns the right to be brought onto the Internet so we can be immortalized in a medium where nothing ever really disappears (even the things we think we delete).  Is it the picture takers who owns that moment in Beyonce’s life and the ability to upload it for all to see or is it Beyonce?  Is it John Smith who owns the right to remain off the Internet or is it my right to look for him?  How do we have our own fun on the Internet while not having it at the expense of others who would like to have control over whether or not they can slip through the online world, unseen?  Or, if not unseen, then at least not in an unflattering way.

And yes, I’m pausing the conversation again to discuss this, but we’re digging deeper in the next post.  I warned you that it was a rabbit hole, friends.

So I’m reading a book, and it is affecting me greatly.  I want to talk about the book without naming the book until I’m done talking about the book*.  Indulge me?  In the end, I’ll gather up all the posts that have been connected to the book, name the book, and then… uh… I’ll go and read something else.  Don’t worry; none of these posts will reveal any spoilers.

I’m aware that this is a little ass-backwards in the vein of book discussion.

But this book is unique in that it feels a bit like an optical illusion.  When I look at it from this angle, it makes total sense.  And when I look at it from that angle, it looks bat-shit irrational.  Well, which one is it?  Best idea in the world or worst idea in the world?  Because it can’t really be both at the same time.  Right?

*******

I’m starting with a topic that additionally keep popping up like a weed online lately.  I saw two different posts in two different places in the same week, and this topic also bubbles up in my book.  Do we have the right to be forgotten?

Image: Jlhopgood via Flickr

Both posts riffed off of the same EU ruling that allowed search results (tying a man to a negative experience) to be removed from the Internet.  The man argued that constantly having his name tied publicly to the foreclosure of his house was a violation of his privacy.  The court agreed and ruled for the removal of the auction notice.

It makes sense.  I mean, anyone who could be financially affected by this man would have the foreclosure turn up in a privately conducted search, such as a bank researching a prospective client.  And the general public doesn’t need to know about a person’s foreclosure to make decisions in the same way that a person might want to know if they live next door to a child molester.  It could potentially socially affect the man if every time someone Googled his name, it popped up with that information — which, by the way, is now 16 years old.  It’s embarrassing, I guess.  And it’s information without context — you know about the foreclosure, but you don’t know the circumstances to bring him into foreclosure.  So… yes… makes sense to remove that sort of information from the Internet at someone’s request.

Right?

Of course, some groups are decrying it as Internet censorship.  That to delete anything from the Internet — any information — is an act of changing history, the conversation, the public record.  That makes sense too.  I mean, how do we determine what can be removed and what cannot?  What if President Clinton wanted his relationship with Monica Lewinsky to be stricken from the Internet?  Would we do that?  Their affair isn’t information the general public needs in order to make a decision.  Sort of like the foreclosure.  But… can you imagine removing something like that?  A piece of history?  And really, what if President Clinton wanted it removed and Monica Lewinsky wanted it up?  Whose desire to have the story removed or out there wins?

So… no… when you look at it that way, it doesn’t make sense to remove information from the Internet.

All of this ties in with this idea of whether or not we have the right to be forgotten.  We certainly have the right to be remembered; by belonging to any society, we participate in the right of public record keeping.  Our existence is noted and counted.  Our death is too.  Those are both legal entitlements which give us access to more legal entitlements.

But what about the right to be forgotten?  Do we have the right to erase the fact that we existed?  We obviously can’t force people to forget us — at least, not until we enter an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

But let’s start at the largest level — our relationship with companies, organizations, or agencies.

We already pointed out above an example where someone wanted to opt out of having an agency (or, I believe in this case the agency gave the information to a newspaper who produced an ad about the foreclosure) place their information online.  What about the other direction?  Should it be an individual right to close a social media account — for a person to tell a company that even if they put their information out there willingly, they would now like to remove it?

Were you aware that you give away this right with certain sites?  That spaces on the Internet, such as Facebook or WordPress or Blogger or LinkedIn or Evernote or Starbucks or Barnes and Noble… well, the list is long… specifically state in their terms of service that you cannot delete your account and remove its presence from their servers?  That once you set up an account, once you upload your first status message or your first picture, you lose control of that data.

Which isn’t a big deal if you look at it from one angle.  I mean, why would I care if something I say is on a server in some remote room… somewhere?  I don’t say very interesting things.  At least, they’re not very interesting or controversial in today’s society.  Based on what I know now, I feel comfortable with everything I say online.

But what about tomorrow?  Or the next day?

The world could change, and something that seems benign now could become anathema.  Twitter takes over the world and starts punishing all former Facebook users.  We quickly try to delete our accounts to save our lives but… WE CAN’T!  Or maybe it’s not even that outlandish a scenario.  Maybe I become famous later and someone digs up my past blatherings; things I thought would only be seen by my friends or things I thought I deleted upon second thought.  Yeah, when I look at it from that angle, I’d sort of like the ability to control my data.

If I have the right to sign up for an account and upload information, I’d like the ability to delete an account and remove my information.  I would like the right to be forgotten by Facebook and WordPress and Blogger, etc. even if I know that I cannot control being forgotten by actual human beings.  But in doing so, am I committing Internet censorship?  Am I trying to rewrite history?  Change the story?

This is getting too long, so I’ll end there and pick up this thread after you’ve gotten a chance to weigh in…

* I want to talk about the real world implications of the book without pulling in a discussion of the plotline and characters in this book.  Also, I haven’t finished it yet, so I would hate for someone to spoil any of the twists for me.  But if you’re dying to know the book before I get to the last post about it, email me and I’ll tell you.  Not a secret; I just want these questions that arise from the book rather than the book itself to be the focus.