The Lesson of the Sony Hack: We Should All Jump to the ‘Erasable Internet’

The messaging app Snapchat showed that saving everything wasn’t the only way to navigate the digital world.

This month’s news provides yet another occasion for a friendly public-service reminder to anyone who uses a digital device to say anything to anyone, ever. Don’t do it. Don’t email, don’t text, don’t update, don’t send photos.

At least, don’t do it if you have any expectation that what you say will remain private — a sentiment that’s usually taken for granted in human communication, but that we should all throw to the winds, at least until we figure out a way to completely rethink how we store and manage our digital data.

Because here’s the thing about the digital world that we must remember. Nothing you say in any form mediated through digital technology — absolutely nothing at all — is guaranteed to stay private. Before you type anything, just think: How will this look when it gets out? What will Angelina Jolie think if she finds out about this? If Angelina won’t like it, don’t send it. Because Angelina will find out. So will the rest of the world.

This might seem like an extreme, perhaps jaded response to the hack at Sony Pictures Entertainment, which has resulted in the disclosure of thousands of private documents ranging from trivial to merely embarrassing to grossly serious.

The disclosures make the case for creating what I’ve called “the erasable Internet.” Last year, after the stunning rise of Snapchat, an app that sends pictures and messages that disappear after the recipient receives them, I argued that we were witnessing the birth of a new attitude toward data online.

Snapchat showed that saving everything — the default assumption of digital communication since its birth — wasn’t the only way to navigate the digital world. “Erasing all the digital effluvia generated by our phones and computers can be just as popular a concept as saving it,” I argued — and if we moved toward that model, the Internet might be a more private, and less dangerous and damaging place.

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