The internet continues to be praised as a grand new medium for discourse – and rightly so. It erases biases and lets ideas flow nearly unhindered by presentation. It cuts through time zones and allows for calculated conversation. It is the medium on which other media flourish.

I’ve noticed a problem recently though. Information on the internet is too permanent. Google has heard every word and has a perfect memory. We know this, and writings such as this one are carefully thought through as a result. In a sense, this makes writing more clear, but it also limits one’s willingness to explore the unknown. It’s hard to think out loud on the internet. Words are picked apart as though written in a legal brief. Daydreams are suppressed because they could be perfectly recalled in one hundred years. Emotions are muted.

Last week, I submitted something for the De Novo Internet Law & Culture Symposia, but only because they extended the deadline. It’s not that I didn’t have the ideas (which I can express perfectly in a crowded bar). Rather, I just didn’t have the time to write them down in a calculated one-way format.

Indeed the permanence of information on the web has implications serious enough to prompt a complaint that someone’s Law School Discussion username infringes a trademark (I couldn’t think of a plausible argument for this, but I deleted the account as requested).

Recently, Google announced the testing of an email system known as “Gmail”. The fundamental concept of Gmail rests on making all email permanent and being really smart at finding messages. I think it’s a fine idea, but I do wonder whether the guarantee that anything one sends will be perfectly recoverable will limit idea development. Perhaps society can compensate by bringing back the offline discussion.