The days when you could do something publicly and it could be forgotten are quickly diminishing. Time was, you could be a hell-driven rapscallion during your youth or in your private life and it wouldn't have any bearing on your professional life.

Events would have significance in the moment and only the moment. Lapses in judgment would, with time's passage, fade from the thoughts of others. All was forgotten, if not forgiven.

That's no longer the case. We have the internet.

The internet is a wonderful tool for searching and collecting distributed knowledge – but some of that knowledge is about you. What you thought was once in the past can very quickly, and surprisingly, become current.

Everything that you post online, everything posted about you online, has the potential of becoming part of the public record. Expect to see more stories of people getting sacked when their employer discovers their blog, or people's naive teenage rantings being turned against them later in their professional careers, or embarrassing photos being widely disseminated.

Case in point: this image of Bill Gates from a 1983 Teen Beat magazine was linked to from a Slashdot story earlier today. Several hundred thousand people saw this – several hundred thousand more will see it in blogs and forum postings. I wouldn't be surprised if half the employees at Microsoft don't have this image sitting in their inbox at this very moment as everyone gets a chuckle at the boss' expense.

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I'm willing to wager that, given the choice, Bill would have preferred these photos not be dredged up. I'm pretty sure if he could go back and do the photo-shoot again, he'd of removed the Apple PC from his office.

Time was, you could say to yourself – 'is anyone going to remember this 10 year from now?' The answer to that now depends on whether someone blogs about it.