DO YOU get irritated by egosurfers, addicted to Googling their own name? Then get them to try a data-mining tool called Personas, and they may be in for a surprise.
Devised by , a PhD student at the , Personas runs a Yahoo search on a name you give it, and extracts statements from the results. Using a natural-language processing algorithm it then builds a profile of the subject by linking words in the statements with 28 topics defined by Zinman, including 鈥渙nline鈥�, 鈥渢ravel鈥�, 鈥渆ducation鈥� and 鈥減rofessional鈥�.
Will your egosurfers get an accurate profile? Probably not, as it will be based on data for everyone who shares the target name.
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And that, says Zinman, is precisely the point. He describes Personas as 鈥渁 critique on data mining鈥�, intended to highlight the misplaced faith some have in the computer analysis of large data sets. 鈥淚t鈥檚 always presented so authoritatively,鈥� he says, 鈥渨hen in reality what鈥檚 happening behind the scenes is controlled voodoo.鈥�
Personas is part of an exhibit at the MIT Museum called , looking at life in the information-rich world. It can also be reached at
