Tap to write history: Our digital legacy

These are the slides for my talk at MMConf (http://www.mmconf.com/speakers#aitor_garcia_rey). As usual they are not very useful when stripped of context & diatribes. Eventually a video of the talk will be published and this description will be updated.

Initial abstract for the talk:

# Tap to write History

### Abstract

For the last 5.000 years, humans have been keeping written records of small and big events but for most of this time span creating and storing them has been expensive, difficult or even dangerous. In 2013 even the smallest details in the life of an average teenager will be recorded with higher fidelity and thoroughness that the one used for detailing Gengis Khan's conquests, and everything thanks to the mobile, the basic enabler of these hyper-detailed life logs.

Which are the implications of the quantified self from a historical perspective? Is all this data more resilient than a medieval parchment?

I'd love to talk with you about it.

### Extended description

I'd like to discuss the topic of the quantified self from a historical perspective and the impact of mobile devices in the increasing amount of biographic data everybody is collecting in different apps and networks.

I would like to expand in a few different vectors for:

* Abundance: Are more data points increasing the quality and correctness of our narratives by mere brute force or can we construct with them new historical tools?

* Perdurability: Is the information we're generating better prepared for future analysis and long-term storage than other technologies we've used in the past?

* Ubiquity: The tools for creating biographies and tracking our position, food and social engagements are now cheap and in the pocket of millions, even in developing countries. Will we be able to discover to more relevant signals or just an incredible amount of noise?

And connect each one of these points with historical data to put them in context. Finally I'll add some examples and recommendations on how to improve mobile apps and data resilience for the future.

Transcript

1. Tap to Write History: Our Digital Legacy
2. Mobile Devices
3. The Great Migration
4. We've been cyborgs for 2 million years.
5. We've been cyborgs for 2 million years.
11. Ishango Bone
12. Ishango Bone
13. Storage Computation Self tracking 20.000 BC
14. Khipus & Spreadsheets
15. Primary cord Pendant cords Knots
17. 3 0 0 0 8 2 1 0
18. Puruchuco
19. 3.000 8.210 8.131 + 2.010 8.110 8.131 + 1.000 3.110 6.130 = 6.010 19.430 22.392
20. 3 Double knots == “Puruchuco”
21. Geolocation Tree diagrams Base-10 Spreadsheets Book-keeping 1400 AD
22. Historical need to transfer information and stories
32. Your quantified digital self makes you unique.
33. Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility
34. Antenna ID Time AB234 8:32am AB235 9:15am AB236 12:05am AB237 6:45pm ... ... ... ... ... ... 15 months 1.5M users anonymized 2.5B interac.
35. Data points needed to characterize a user?
36. Data points needed to characterize a user? 4 (95% accuracy)
37. The new sacrifice
38. The Cloud is pouring data over humans
39. Unique & Equal
40. Couch Cachet.com
43. You are your digital self.
44. What is real?
48. Who is the data holder?
51. "There's a new phenomena that I like to call the Stacks. And we've got five of them: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. The future of the stacks is basically to take over the internet and render it irrelevant [...] None of them offer any prosperity or security to their human participants, except for their shareholders. The internet has users. Stack people are livestock ignorant of what's going on, and moving from on stack to another.” Bruce Sterling
53. Geocities
54. VOID
57. Dutch East India Company
59. Facebook 2012 AD Roman Empire 150 AD Users 1B monthly active users 65M Imperial subjects World pop. 6.973M 250M % World pop. ~14.49% ~26%
60. Thanks.