Ctrl+Z.

I saw someone sitting on a bench as I walked across campus; he was staring at a tree and transcribing what he saw onto a large sketchpad...  He's an artist.  I admire his dedication; his bare hands must be freezing, and who knows how long he's been out there.  And it's all for the sake of putting a tree on paper.

Let's say he's drawing in pen and makes a big mistake, or the pen bursts and spurts ink all over the drawing.  What he do?  Ctrl+Z, right?  Wrong.

What happens to us when we start to believe that nothing we do is necessarily permanent, that everything can be undone with the push of a button?  The "cut and paste" mentality of virtual reality doesn't always hold true for real life.  Knowing (or at least believing) that what I put on the internet doesn't have to be permanent might cause me to have one of two attitudes, or a combination of both:

1. "I can ridicule and demoralize people on the internet...  I can always delete it later."

"Four things come not back - the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life and the neglected opportunity."

One needn't look far to see the actions of people who don't understand or don't believe this adage - especially the part about the spoken word and the sped arrow - and many of these people are proving it in cyberspace.  Take a look at the string of comments below almost any article, and you'll most likely see people taking jabs at each other and saying things that they might not have the guts to say in person.  I really believe that the way people behave on online forums has a negative effect on how they behave in real life.

2. "I can publish something now, even though it's incomplete... I can always change it later."

Is the assumption that I can go back and "tweak" whatever I've created always necessarily a bad thing?  Maybe not.  In Digital Civilization, we are encouraged to publish blog posts even if they're not polished or even complete (that explains his blog posts, you might be thinking).  Knowing that my publication will be there to alter later if needed, I can put it out there now and see what happens.  Although I'm still learning how to do that, I suppose it can definitely be a good thing.

So...  I'm going to post this now and tweak it later.  After all, I can do that.