My Digital FootPrint

21 years ago there was no digital footprint ideas so there is no digital trace or record, but I do have the press cutting that got me into a lot of trouble.  I had no idea back then how advanced the technology was as it seemed normal to me or how long it would take to generate adoption.   Of interest to me is that the big issue of the day was privacy ( you answer the phone and someone can see you, can they remotely switch on the camera and look round my home).  I have never appeared to escape the clutches of privacy issues. The context is; I was working at GEC Marconi on Videophones with Tom, Dave , Mark , Alvin , Rob and Andy , Andy , Les to name a few of the team.  I was at the Ideal Home exhibition in London and on the BT stand and launching the Videophone. The Relate 2000 videophone was the first one BT made commercially. It promised callers the chance to see, and be seen by, the person they were talking to. It featured a flip-up screen on the...

Image. It is an algorithm: globalimaging.com/images/modis-atmos.jpg Algorithms     are the foundation of your computing interactions. An algorithm is the means by which a computer program can make decisions about you, for you, or decisions that affect you.  Algorithms are the translation of what you do into rules and policies that a computer understands (i.e. 0s and 1s). Like it or not, you are influenced by them as much as you influence them. Algorithms need data, they use digital data that you give, leave or have tracked about you (willingly or not).  This input into an algorithm is your digital footprint, which comes from Facebook, Twitter, text messages, email, key stokes, swipes, gestures, play lists, payment records, your routes, navigation – indeed anything you do which is an interaction with an electronic device. This is the basis of what an algorithm knows about you. It is how an algorithm can model you, it takes input and predicates based on wha...

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Catholic University of Louvain studied 15 months' worth of anonymised mobile phone records for 1.5 million individuals. Here's  the full study. With no real surprise they found from the "mobility traces" - the evident paths of each mobile phone - that only four locations and times were enough to identify a particular user. We are predictable and so Dan Ariely Work comes true.  In their own words “ They studied fifteen months of human mobility data for one and a half million individuals and find that human mobility traces are highly unique. In fact, in a dataset where the location of an individual is specified hourly, and with a spatial resolution equal to that given by the carrier's antennas, four spatio-temporal points are enough to uniquely identify 95% of the individuals. We coarsen the data spatially and temporally to find a formula for the uniqueness of human mobility traces given their re...

Image: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gestures during his keynote address at the Facebook f8 Developers Conference. Zuckerberg's Law is that every year the amount of personal things you will share on Facebook doubles – Source NYT 2008 there are three questions we are now facing in 2013 as sharing continues to grow and we hit the question of where we will end the year. Is there a finite amount that you are prepared to share about your life with others?; Is there a finite amount I am prepared to accept as shared?; and, Is sharing driven by us or the machine? The question is not when will it slow, but what will cause sharing to slow / change. However as sensor and medical data comes online will the  trend prove true?  

The question I have is what data are you giving off (right now) that is giving me the feedback about your state of mind (how you feel about work).  If I combine your data with the data I get from the wider team (and social norms) and how it has changed over time – can I tell how well you are managed?  Probably Seeking insights from digital footprint data – we just need to know what to look for.

Source : http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/plan-your-digital-afterlife-with.html Google has presented a new product that plans your digital afterlife – think Digital Will or Death Switch – you can instruct Google to delete your personal data and transfer your files to designated recipients, if you want them preserved for posterity. This is a class of service called managing your data after death that has been talked about a lot on My Digital Footprint. It is interesting that one of the largest players has done something about it and does highlight the importance of managing digital assets after death and is an attempt to solve a real (perceived) problem.  There is a host of companies ( Legacy Locker , Cirrus , Death Switch , Perpetu , AfterSteps ,   The Digital Beyond   DadApp , Social Safe to name a just a few) who are willing to charge you for this service and given that this is Google only data, you still need something for all your other ser...

Paris Brown  (17) was the UK's first youth police and crime commissioner and last week tweets dating back three years made her appear racist, homophobic and supportive of the drug culture.   As Paris has since recognised that even though teenagers have been brought up with digital media all around them and it is second nature to share instant snippets of their lives with their immediate peer network, it is rather difficult to remember that all your online activity is stored somewhere and can be found very easily. Context is often lost, but the words are not. However, what we often forget is that your digital footprint is made up of what you say and what others say about you.  This blog is not only part of Paris’ Digital Footprint but also mine.