The personal infocloud
We used to talk to each other. We used to communicate directly: “hello x, here’s what I think about y, here’s what I’ve been doing” and so on.
Increasingly, social media and profile data allows us to throw infobits into the externalised datacloud which swirls around each of us online.
People we used to communicate with now don’t need to engage us directly in conversation to hear what’s going on, or what songs we’re into at the moment, or where we’re thinking about going on holiday: they can pluck instead tidbits from the swarm.
I was in the lift the other day with a colleague - someone I know vaguely, but not particularly well at all. As the car dawdled between floors, I said “Did you have a nice time in Cornwall?”
She looked surprised, and asked how I’d known about that.
I looked confused and said I’d seen it on her (public) twitter feed.
She hestitated, stumbled and then told me what a nice time she’d had at her mum’s place. But it was clear that there was a separation between what was broadcast publicly and what was discussable in public. And further, that she had been communicating publicly, only I wasn’t the public she’d had in mind.
