In keeping with my last post about datamining, and the overwhelming amount of information available out there, I thought I would tell you a little bit about myself.
Most of these factoids are interesting only to myself, sometimes not even that. Being able to dig into my financial transactions gives me the opportunity to do a number of things, though – I can construct an “average” day. If I place my expenditures on a city map, I can draw my route over a day (or a week, or a month), see when I buy my morning coffee, and the average radius of my lunchtime wanderings. I can even use it to retrace my steps, and find the name of that great Japanese restaurant I went to in Auckland last year.
You might still think that these are unimportant, but this ignores two issues. First, we don’t know what’s insignificant until we can see it. There may be important trends in my buying habits – if I buy a coffee in the morning, I may end up working late because I forget to go home. Second, it’s important to somebody – it might not be front-page news if I go to a restaurant, but it’s nice to have the name on hand so I can tell a friend whether to give it a miss or not.
Most of our interaction with computers (as digital cameras , cellphones or point-of-sale devices) is being recorded. The sum total of this recorded data is referred to as our digital footprint. While many people find the presence – or even the idea - of this record threatening, I think it gives us an opportunity to answer important questions about who we are, and what we do.