X-log

Friday, February 21, 2003

We're having a baby!!!  My wife and I found out last week that she is pregnant, but we needed to wait a week for confirmation.  We went in this afternoon for an ultrasound and saw the hearbeat for the very first time.  It took my breath away.  I can't explain my reaction.  It was just instinctive.  It was good.  2:58:22 PM   comments ()

Drivel:  I have been reading William Gibson's Idoru recently.  He paints a very interesting picture of how people perceive each other in the future.  In particular, how the amount and types of data they generate identify people.  This has made me wonder what I look like when all of the data I generate in aggregated.  The only publicly accessible data I generate is this weblog and various postings to discussion groups I belong to.  There is a ton of other data that I generate that is available to me electronically, but no easy way to aggregate it.  All of my financial transactions and holding with various institutions, medical history, education records, credit history, cell phone calls, telephone calls, household utilities, mortgage and rental history, emails, travel programs, and a complete history of purchases online and offline.  Obviously you wouldn't want to aggregate all of the raw data as a single individual could easily fill a couple of terabytes in the span of a few years.  You would want meta-data flowing to you.  What would you do with this data once you have it?  First, you would want to monitor who else is accessing your data.  Second, you would want to find better ways to secure your data.  Next, you would want to find ways to begin restricting access to your data.  The one assumption I am making here is that all of the data you generate belongs to you.  Right now, it doesn't.  Your financial history belongs to the institutions that represent you.  Your cell phone and telephone call records belong to the communications companies.  This is quite an interesting problem as it is not only technological in nature, but very much legal and political in nature as well.  What do you think?  10:40:33 AM   comments ()

Last update: 7/1/03; 7:43:16 AM.