June 28, 2018

Your digital self — why you should keep every byte you create

From before you even wake up in the morning, your day is being encoded into digital data. Your phone understands when you are active versus when you are asleep. Social media sites know when you’ll make your first post and which triggers they can plant in your inbox to ensure you do. Soon, several device makers know you are listening to the morning news, as you do every weekday. 

Your search engine and many other services know that you are trying to make the perfect pancake for your kids. A number of databases are recording the fact that you are at home later than usual today and not requesting a ride anyplace. And this is all before you’ve put on your slippers.

Selling out your digital half

Those are just some of the most vivid examples of the personal data that continuously builds the digital representation of you. Inside your technology, applications work with the digital you to do other work on your behalf, optimize or manipulate the real-world you, or probably most frequently, sell you products and other things. While you may know that these digital representations are nothing like you, your opinion doesn’t really matter to those technologies that interact with your digital self.

The whole process of creating the digital self has mostly crept up on society without any widespread planning. Only a few decades ago, the digital self wasn’t much more than your email handle and the contents of your inbox. Today, your digital self spans everything from your text messages to your sexual preferences, your brand loyalties, your family’s pregnancy statuses, your point-to-point trips, your recent and upcoming job status, and many other significant and insignificant points in between.

Read more at https://medium.com/textileio/your-digital-self-why-you-should-keep-every-byte-you-create-3a73bf0b3eb1

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