But the Internet and search tools can also be a barrier to reinvention. By archiving the minutiae of our lives, they have chained us to every mistake, misstep, or poor choice we’ve ever made—making the possibility of self-reinvention seem like an ideal from an older time. In a sense, we’ve collectively lost our ability to forget. And with it, we’ve forfeited a very American ideal—the right to a new beginning.
