of data mirrors and a sense of belonging

part of the dataspejlet (data mirror) project at trapholt museum is small piece of personal embroidery. you actually download your data from facebook and your search history from google chrome and send it in to a model/algorithm that the museum has created for the project, and it returns a quadrant diagram with circles on it representing the words that appear most frequently. if you click on the numbered circles, the words change, so you can select the ones you wish to think of while you embroider and create your personal "data mirror." 

i think because the algorithm is surely set to danish, it has returned some weird words for me - like "lov" which is surely actually "love" in my posts and not "promise" if it were danish and the "ll" that's surely from "we'll" and "it'll" and other contractions. i have no idea what the placement of the circles on the quadrant means. 

the museum had kits available in set colors - you get two colors to use, plus white, which you should use for the words that appear a lot, but which you don't want to count in your stitched picture of your data. unfortunately, i didn't get my hands on a kit, not imagining that there were only a few available, but i suppose it makes sense since the artwork can only be the size it can be. i have felt more disappointed than is warranted that i didn't get a kit. i plan to work with the graphs on my own anyway and this way, i get to keep them. and decide to use as many colors as i wish.

and i am getting to participate in the woven part of the work, so i am still a part of the larger work. in my disappointment over not getting a kit, i realized, once again, that being part of a community is important to me. i wanted to see my stitched data mirror in dialogue with all the other stitched data mirrors - to have a visual depiction of how and where i fit in the scheme of things. to contribute to something beautiful that only becomes more beautiful in dialogue with everyone else's work. i feel genuinely sad that i don't get to be part of that. and it triggers that old familiar feeling of being on the outside (i really should get therapy for that).

i think i also wanted something beautiful to come of all that data i stupidly gave to facebook all those years. it was nice to think that something good would come it somehow, when they've used it for nothing but evil and nefarious purposes. 

my chrome history diagram is much less interesting since it's so full of work-related stuff like kitchens (in no less than four languages) and dashboards and the project management software asana - which i visit regularly. i wanted to submit my blog data, but their algorithm couldn't handle the amount of data. i don't think my google visits say that much about me as a private person, but they do say something about me as a work person. 

but i guess that whatever i make of it is for myself. and maybe that's ok. but i would have liked it to be part of something bigger. sigh.

using data for good or evil?

today's haul from amazon

there was a time when amazon emails seemed to read my very mind. they suggested things to me based on the things i'd bought over the years and i felt like it was as close to browsing in a real bookstore as you could get online. sadly, they seem to have changed them and they're not like that anymore, now they're just sending me the same ads for crap electronics and pulp fiction that they send to everyone. i feel like we've drifted apart and they don't know me at all. and maybe in some way, that's a good thing. i'm less tempted when i get an amazon mail (in fact, i usually just delete without looking now) and maybe it means they're saving less of my data, so they actually don't know me as well.

many stores in denmark have gotten onboard the loyalty card bandwagon. the one i actually use is matas, which is a shop that sells makeup, perfume and body care products. i like the mails i get from them and i feel like they're using the data about what i purchase wisely, to target the mails to my desires. plus, they have cooperation with other shops, like clothing stores and even the shop where i got my glasses. you earn points when you shop and you can buy things, even nice things, with those points. thanks to my very expensive prescription, i've been able to get a nice hair dryer set, perfume, shampoo, hairspray, nail polish and lotion. they come in pretty packages and it feels like getting a present. in fact, i even gave sabin the hair dryer as a christmas present. it's a loyalty card program that i can get into.

but i'll admit that handing over that card feels a little like i'm voluntarily letting big brother look over my shoulder. if they're tracking my buying habits at the grocery store (you can also have a card there) or in ikea (where they appeal to your altruistic side by donating some miniscule amount to save the children every time you shop) or at h&m, what does that mean in the long run? and what are they doing with your data? do they share it with others? and if so, which others?

i just got a new cartridge for our soda stream in the local imerco (a homewares chain) and she asked if i had a card. i had one at one point, but didn't get it switched over to my current wallet, so i said to her that i did, but that i had just read an article about such cards and was feeling like i no longer wanted to use them. there was another woman in the store who, uncharacteristically for a dane, piped up and said she thought such cards were great because then the stores know what you would like to buy. i would argue that they don't. they only know what i did buy and have absolutely no idea about what i might have actually wanted to buy. they know what i settled for, because what i really wanted wasn't there.

i think with all of the nsa spying exposed by edward snowdon, i am more suspicious of such things. tho' i have no qualms, as i write here on my free blogger blog, and use my gmail in the chrome browser, at turning my every thought and interaction over to google. i am more suspicious of facebook, but still, i give them an awful lot of my data as well. i just can't see that they're using it wisely, as the ads they show me there have never had anything to do with what i like or would be interested in. google, on the other hand, really gets me, which is maybe why i don't find it evil that they have my data.

what do you think? do you participate in loyalty programs? are we already so entrenched in the matrix that there's no way out?

* thanks, bill, for getting me thinking about this.