Aggregation

I would like a single place where I can aggregate all as much of my activity as I need/would like.

With the advent of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Linked-In and Digg (to name a very few), people including myself interact with the web a lot more than in the past. These sites more often than not have some easy(-ish) way to publish one’s activity, or if not publish it, access it in such a way that you can interact with it while not actually on the site. With a little bit of technical know-how, it is possible to weave all of these separate timelines into one single timeline.

All of these timelines aggregated into one singular stream help to paint a portrait of one’s activity in the cyber world, and in effect embody that person in an etherial way. It is an avatar, in almost every sense of the word.

The question arises of how much information is too much information. While cyber-crimes such as identity theft are certainly serious issues, the more pertinent question to ask is, “How much am I comfortable with other people knowing.” The answer, of course will vary from person to person. Some people choose to restrict access to their Twitter profiles, and that certainly has its place. The truth is, once you put something onto the internet, it is there, forever. Your information is around for everyone to see, it is just a matter of how interested a person is and to what length a person is prepared to go to get at that information.