Remember when you were a kid, and you did something really naughty, your teachers used to always threaten you with:
“Now that’s going on your permanent record !”
Now here, I am dating myself a bit. I have no idea if teachers still say this, but the generation of schoolmarms, god bless their hearts, who first lay a paddle on my rear end, before my parents yanked me into a catholic school, used to run around saying that all of the time.
They were, of course, somewhat correct. Each of us more or less has a permanent dossier, or rather a distributed meta-dossier. From primary school to secondary school, high school’s records to university, university to employee, to employee, tax agencies, health agencies, insurance agencies, private and public.
A web of data flowing back and forth, like ethereal arteries. Their lifeblood being the stuff our identities are composed of, in modern society.
But did it ever dawn on any of us to ask a fundamental question..
Why in the deuce do we even have a “permanent record” to begin with?
Just something to ask yourself now and them, now let’s return to basking the joys of a managerial society.
_EOF