What does the Internet say about you?
Created by Aaron Zinman, Personas is “a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab” that attempts to “create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity” by utilizing
magic some fancy analysis based solely on the input of your first and last name.
The project touches upon themes of privacy and particularly identity in an increasingly wired world in which “Personas demonstrates the computer’s uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name.” While it does capture certain snapshots of an individual, to the headline question–”What does the Internet say about you?–like horoscopes, in my opinion, Personas reveals a whole lot of nothing. That said, the graphical interface is very hypnotic.