MIT’s Personas tool is difficult to describe.
It’s a little like peering inside someone’s head as they Google for you and watching them put together the connections and form an impression of your life, work, interests and online contributions.
After typing in your name, for a couple of minutes you’ll watch it wander through cyberspace, picking up nuggets about you, interpreting them, pushing them through its algorithm, and finally displaying a graphical representation of how it categorises your life.
The tool’s creators describe the result as
“How the internet sees you.”
It was a reminder to me of the huge amount of information stored online about me, much of it created by people I know - including myself - but some as a result of offline activities and much more obscurely sourced.
And it’s a reminder about my digital legacy - the footprint of information that will probably outlive me by many generations and be available to any historians who want to trail through my past.
Also proof that if you’ve got a fairly unique name, you’re a lot more identifiable and discoverable! The characterisation of John Smith is a lot less precise!