Sunday, September 20, 2009

A visualization of data mining

http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html

I found this link over the weekend - you put in your name (or anyone's name), and the algorithm tries to make sense of what information is publicly available online, categorizing it in the same way as a data mining program. It is, essentially, "how the Internet sees you," inaccuracies and all.

In light of our recent discussions about seeking patterns in data and technologically tracking these changes across time (e.g., baby names), it is interesting to see how this might work on the level of an individual. It also speaks to issues of privacy, facework, and the decentralization of information (which is particularly relevant to Benkler). If there is an inaccuracy, there's very little one can do about it. While Benkler argues that this decentralization gives users more power, it also makes the management of that information much more complex.

1 comment:

  1. ok--

    So this is really interesting. I like how this app acts like a mirror for parts of our online personas that we might not be aware of.

    I ran this and stumbled across an interview with a friend of mine from my rock climbing and route-setting days. It was really a treat to get a window into that conversation, which added to the sport part of my data-mined identity profile.

    "TED WELSER WAS ALSO A BIG INFLUENCE IN MY SETTING CAREER, AS WELL AS HIS FRIEND (PROTOGE?) BILL KELLY " When I googled this text, I found:

    http://www.routesetter.com/2008/04/28/setting-legends-tim-steele/

    The comments also linked to folks from the Miami University Outdoor Rec Program, which was neat too.

    I wish the output of the personas web app would make each of part of the output clickable so users could more easily follow the links back to the data that went into that section of the profile.

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