I can’t help but see an element of self-preservation amid our data collection. Preservation embedded deep within our check-ins, our food photos, our tracked steps and mapped run routes. We are collecting like never before. We used to collect privately. The physical possessions one owns when one dies constitutes, perhaps, an idealization of the self. Those possessions, however, have always been unnetworked. And they were limited by physics; you could only collect so much. Closets filled, things decayed, people moved, treasures were thrown away. Now the collection is boundless. The space near infinite. Every single item collected is plugged into the network. And so that self—that idealization—suddenly flows fast and far. It touches other selfs, other idealizations. It can be reconstituted by data mappers.
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