How The Internet Sees Samuel Klein – and Samuel John Klein
Part of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit on display now at the MIT Museum (http://web.mit.edu/museum/exhibitions/connections/), Personas (http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html) is a critique of data mining. It searches the net for the input name (which may or may not be yours – you can put any string into the query box (and then uses an analytical method to make a bunch of assumptions of what you're all about based on what it's analyzed.
Putting Samuel Klein into the query box produced the following, which I assume is composite of assumed interest categories, weighted by the relevance of the terms. Since there are, actually, a relative armload of Samuel Kleins in the noosphere (one is a prominent Wikipedian, the other a leading authority on obesity) the composite Samuel Klein according to the net its kind of me, and kind of really not me at all:
Then I decided to put in my middle name (it said put in first name and last name but didn't say you couldn't put in the last). This looks much more me, though there is some anomaly inherent:
Such as, whatever the hell is "aggression" supposed to mean? And many words have been applied to me, but this is the only place you'll ever see me associated with "fashion" in anything other than an unironic way.
Which I think is the point. Data mining is probably happening. It tells a story-but does it tell the appropriate one (most likely, not, or at best, partially).
Something to think about.
