Flame Tracks

By Tom ClaburnThe Internet is a marketplace of ideas: that means you can't get something for nothing. In exchange for the worldwide forum of Usenet, for example, you agree to put yourself under the surveillance of indexers. Sure, you can flame away and rail against the injustices of the world on Usenet. Just remember that each of your posted words funds the construction of an ideological avatar with which you can - and will - be compared. Speech is free only in the present. In the future, you may well look back at your black-and-white archived footprints as if you were Dorian Gray and your prose was your aging portrait. The price of free speech is merely the ability to change your mind, or, at least, to turn the biases of those with minds unwilling to change into legislation.