Pranav Mistry Pioneers Fluid Interfaces For Data at MIT

Will this really take ten years?

The Social Web’s Evolving Social Contract

When tech companies handed their keys to their creditors at the end of the boom in 2000, some left behind heaps of customer records in filing cabinets and on harddrives . The accountants turned out the lights. The keepers of those files, network and account managers, had long been fired. That data went to the dumpsters or was scavenged by furniture trolls.

Fast forward to the current recession. Sure companies will go bankrupt. Some may be equally negligent guarding your personal information, but more likely your credit card number, address, and content will be hoovered-up by some larger acquiring company. The content created at Pownce is now Six Apart’s responsibility. The info at Napster is being sucked into the databases of Best Buy — yes the Napster! Elsewhere, Google Notebooks are going dark.

The powerless, to compensate for their condition, often feel the need to strike out. That is not what this is. It’s not alarmist. It’s not a call for an internet user’s bill-of-rights. It is just an observation that on the second go-around with web-company closures, the implied social contract that exists in cities — where it is OK to have cars drive by you at highspeed and have you not fear for your life — is now in effect with data and personal information on the net.

Datachondria: Better Living Through Data

Welcome to Datachondria, a blog about living.

Here you’ll find a diverse crowd holding an open conversation — with each other and with the void — about data, technology, information, and the way we live now.

You’ll find us writing as users, consumers, participants, citizens, parents — not as industry insiders or high-window theorists. Although from time to time we’ll probably do that too.

We’ll talk about the exciting implications of a new technology for day-to-day living — and the frustrating holes in the user experience. We’ll write about things that individuals, businesses, governments, and organizations do with data: the things they do well, the things they could do better, and the things they fail to do at all. About the things that could improve our lives in ways trivial and superficial or ways vast and life-changing.

We’ll be asking questions about the implications and complications of technology for personal living, social conduct, and public society. The fears and anxieties that new technologies provoke. The implications for our physical day-to-day lives and for the digital manifestations of self that we use to represent ourselves. How will this help me find my keys? How will this help me structure my personal finances, stay in touch with my friends, discover new music, and avoid the kid who stalked me in high school? What does this mean for how I communicate, or how I make decisions about my work? Does this change the way I think about etiquette, public policy, and whether Nirvana really were a good band? (They were not.) [Yes they were. - ed.]

The relationship between our lives — personal and communal — and the technologies we use is a two-way process, a constant conversation. We’ll be recording some of the dialogue and choosing the soundtrack. Datachondria. Better living through data. Better data through living.