Comments on: Personas

By: Annette

Annette — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:52:16 +0000

I never hide my full name if a website needs it, and my screen name wiirenet, i have registered to a lot of websites/forums/etc with that screen name..

and this thing says it finds nothing of my full name or screen name!

I know when I google both I get results, wonder why its not working on this machine

By: ted

ted — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:32:28 +0000

Hi Aaron Zinman.

To start off, it should have worked no matter what the screen size. Surely that’s not difficult to achieve?

It struck me that you were just googling the information – Yahoo, whatever – and putting pretty colours to the words. I don’t know how that shows “how the Internet sees you” any more than the actual words in context do. I thought MIT was more sophisticated than that.

By: Ashley

Ashley — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:51:17 +0000

To those confused about the sports section: I was watching while it ran, and it looks like the algorithm takes words like “team”, “member”, “pair”, and others to be sports-related, when it could be something completely different.

I share my very common name (even first + last) with several famous people, so I am pretty anonymous.

By: Video Game Dork

Video Game Dork — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:14:01 +0000

I just get a blank screen when I ‘launch’ it. And my screen is plenty big. This is a technical / compatability fail.

By: NeonCat

NeonCat — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:09:16 +0000

I did it, and what I got back was that it was a waste of my time, including the part about figuring out how to make my screen bigger so that it would work.

Now that it turns out to be an “art project” instead of something, I don’t know, interesting, I am a lot more sanguine about it.

By: Aaron Zinman

Aaron Zinman — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:40:48 +0000

Hi, creator here.

You guys should read the text on personas.media.mit.edu, where you’ll see this is an art piece that is critiquing data mining. Inaccuracies are a part of it, although not intentionally put in. The first couple comments are clearly people who got the point of it, which is great to see since this is being shown on the Internet without the added context of the entire museum exhibit.

As far as the “repeatability”, the data is what Yahoo gives me. No trickery here.

Aaron

By: xadrian

xadrian — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:28:07 +0000

Going to agree with the sports thing. I’m a hockey fan, yes, but my online persona is involved in so many art forums and sites, I got more for illegal, cars, books and sports than art.

It seems like it’s pulling key words out of a search, in which case I’m surprised it’s not showing more results for “the” and “I.”

By: GQ

GQ — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:37:18 +0000

I’d love to know what the criteria for “sport” are as I put in my real name and alias and both ended up with huge sport segemnts. I hate sport. I have no interest in it at all.

By: Jeff A

Jeff A — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:14:35 +0000

I entered my real name, and the only hit was some guy who was convicted for petty larceny … some 250 years ago. Great, so I get to carry someone else’s rap because they had the same name. Hope no HR dept ever decides this is a serious tool and utilizes it to make a hiring decision.

By: 032125

032125 — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 04:01:49 +0000

This was simply wrong, and results changes with multiple entries. I have no interest in any sports, yet they always figured in heavily.

By: befu

befu — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 03:53:57 +0000

the interesting thing is that one of the first articles it found was actually one about me. go college years.

By: Johnny Cat

Johnny Cat — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 03:31:13 +0000

Actually it was a post from you, Miss C, on mental_floss.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/7597

By: Johnny Cat

Johnny Cat — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:40:56 +0000

For what it’s worth, I also got a quote pop up that said something like “Johnny Cat is right. The Star Wars spoofs on Robot Chicken are excellent!” Which I totally remember from some old Neatorama post.

By: infinitewell

infinitewell — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:19:13 +0000

So I punched in Professor Farnsworth and got a real kick out of watching the ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ categories duke it out. It took forever going through links, though.

I am befuddled over how big the ‘sports’ block is — regardless of what name is entered.

By: Miss Cellania

Miss Cellania — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:47:23 +0000

I had that problem, too, eni. I had to move my dock to get my screen bigger. What a hassle!

By: eni

eni — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:28:23 +0000

I can’t run it because it doesn’t think my browser window is big enough

By: Foreigner1

Foreigner1 — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:00:10 +0000

One alias gives 30 scrolls of info, all NOT about me.
My main alias that I use here gives 29 scrolls all related to that rockband.
My real name gives 2 scrolls with information about fascinating people with Glorious careers that are definitely not mine…

So I’m safe.

By: John65

John65 — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:29:09 +0000

I can’t get it to load at all. Did we crash it?

By: Johnny Cat

Johnny Cat — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:24:49 +0000

“Johnny Cat was arrested today for eating Roger Rabbit.” Um…k. I also tried my real name, which I apparently share with some “whiny bitch, insecure douche” on ESPN radio.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:37:48 +0000

I’m pretty sure that all of the information coming up has nothing to do with me at all…I was robbed a few years ago though, and just for fun, I put in the name of the assailant. His “illegal” bar was almost non-existant, while mine was the largest of all.

By: Rion

Rion — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:11:16 +0000

It gives different results every time I run it. As a scientist, the non-repeatability of this tells me it’s a bunch of BS.

By: felixthecat

felixthecat — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:09:52 +0000

Looks like my privacy plan has been working: no results.

By: anonymoussss

anonymoussss — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:24:50 +0000

I typed in my first and last name (the combination of which I think im the only person in the world who has — my last name was a spelling error after all haha)

And what came up while it was processing was “absolutely beautiful”

and I got all happy and warm and fuzzy inside…
but then I realized….

That was a comment i had written on amazon.com about one of the earrings i purchased..

*cries*

By: Rudy

Rudy — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:19:48 +0000

No digital traces found. I don’t exist.