As regular readers of this blog are only too well aware I am a passionate promoter of technology and internet-based businesses. However there is at least one dimension in which the elephantine memory of the internet can be a nuisance — incorrect information once loaded into databasQes or just freely available to search engines is difficult to revise. Protecting privacy is another and related dimension but I will save that for another day.

Many years ago a particularly humorous friend in the music business decided to tell a journalist that I had a secret talent for rap and that I enjoyed nothing more than to have a microphone thrust upon me in any large group setting so that I could show-off my talent.

America Has Talent — NOT.

I confess that I do like rap music but only when performed by professionals. While speeding around Central Park on my Specialized Roubaix S-Works (that’s a bicycle if you must ask) shamelessly wearing Team Thomson Reuters Lycra in orange and grey I often listen to a mix of Ludacris Eminem and Jay-Z. My 13 year-old daughter tells me this is the semi-modern equivalent of listening to Frank Sinatra and Lawrence Welk (generations in music having sped-up on internet time as much as hard disk drives and news aggregators) but I find the rhythms still get me up the 110th Street hill on lap 3 or 4. I do harbor some residual concern about the relentlessly misogynist and gun-obsessed lyrics but I don’t think my mom was crazy about Purple Haze Brown Sugar or Casey Jones either.

The point I was trying to make is that information right or wrong once resident in the cloud is very difficult to correct. I was reminded of this recently when a prominent New York civic leader came to see me and asked me whether I was "keeping-up" with my rapping. I knew immediately where her office had done its research Some years ago I had another embarrassing moment when at the end of a town hall meeting at our Bangkok software development center a couple of over-eager young engineers handed me a microphone and encouraged me to end the meeting with one of my "hallmark" raps. Never one to disappoint or offend local custom I managed to mutter my way through some rhyming couplets but The Notorious B.I.G. did not roll over in his grave in appreciation.

So when like every other uncool parent I advise my 11 and 13 year-olds not to post items on the internet that would embarrass them one day during their Senate confirmation hearings I know of what I speak. Leave that job to your friends.