“
You could draw a similar conclusion from Facebook’s Timeline, and the year-in-review videos the company has taken to making of one’s raw profile data. These aren’t intrusive re-scriptings of our experience but instructional videos into how to be a coherent person for algorithms — which, since these algorithms increasingly dictate what others see of you, is more or less how you “really” are in your social networks. Facebook makes the winner’s edit of everybody, because everyone supposedly wins by being on Facebook. Everyone gets to be connected and the center of the universe simultaneously. So why not bequeath to it final-cut rights for your life’s edit?
Tech consultant Alistair Croll, in post at O’Reilly Radar, is somewhat less complacent about our surrendering our editing rights. He makes the case that since everyone henceforth will be born into consolidated blanket surveillance, they will be nurtured by a symbiotic relationship with their own data timeline. “An agent with true AI will become a sort of alter ego; something that grows and evolves with you … When the machines get intelligent, some of us may not even notice, because they’ll be us and we’ll be them.”
”
– Permanent Recorder (via buzz)