* @author Mikey
* @date 2012-03-16 11:43:06
* @shorturl http://kwn.me/1vpl
**/
$this->Post->read('Infosuicide');
This is something I've been thinking of a lot lately. It came up again on HackerNews recently about the famed Ruby programmer "_why" or "Why the Lucky Stiff", who was reportedly one of the first heavily internet involved people to commit what is now branded "Infosuicide".
Disengaging from the Internet via the deletion of all your publicly available information.
More recently Mark Pilgrim, the author of such sites as DiveIntoPython and DiveIntoHTML5 has done the same as _why, replacing all of his sites with a "410 Gone" HTTP Status code.
What makes these two cases stick out in memory? There have to have been many people who have simply erased their online personas and never looked back (or even come back as a different persona? who knows!). These two are simply well known because they were internet-famous. They produced resources that were widely used and they were both programmers.
What I've actually been thinking of though, is how do these people simply NOT come back. Not come back to see the messages people have left, I wonder how they resist that temptation? Do they come back under an alternate persona? How is it possible in this day and age to avoid having an internet presence altogether, never mind what these people did. They removed all references to themselves and thier works (that they controlled).
They must have been passionate about their work, so how does _why resist coming back to the Ruby scene and helping out again? Does he still contribute to Ruby under a different name perhaps?
Just something I wondered about.