Assessing the value of brief automated biographies

Lisa Thomas,Pam Briggs

doi:10.1007/s00779-015-0896-2

Abstract

New systems have been introduced that support the visualisation and sharing of personal digital data, but relatively little work has been done to establish how such systems support reminiscence and personal reflection. In this paper, we explore Intel's Museum of Me, a tool that collates and presents Facebook data in the form of a virtual museum, by asking how such an automated biography might support personal reflection and a process of life review. We supported users in their creation of personal virtual museums and interviewed them about their experiences, using a theoretical framework that highlighted the importance of personal narratives and life review in identity formation and psychological well-being. Our participants enjoyed the experience and welcomed the opportunity for reminiscence, but considered their resulting videos to be rather shallow representations of self, reflective of some of the more trivial exchanges and relationships that can come to dominate social media. We argue that social media in its current form is not well suited to support a meaningful life-review process.

Highlights

The use of narrative to make sense of our everyday lives is often considered a fundamental human behaviour [1] and one that is increasingly supported by new forms of social media that allow us to make sense of the different digital traces we create
We explore Intel’s Museum of Me, a tool that collates and presents Facebook data in the form of a virtual museum, by asking how such an automated biography might support personal reflection and a process of life review
If we set new reminiscence developments in social media against this theoretical background, we can see that a number of interesting questions present themselves. What happens when such acts of reminiscence take place automatically in the form of a digitally generated narrative or experience? Does the automated biographer take control of digital identity in a way which is appealing or unsettling? Would these new, automated forms of reflection generate the same psychological and well-being benefits associated with reminiscence and narration? We offer a very early exploration of such issues in the context of the Museum of Me [MoM]

Summary

Introduction

The use of narrative to make sense of our everyday lives is often considered a fundamental human behaviour [1] and one that is increasingly supported by new forms of social media that allow us to make sense of the different digital traces we create. People share information with colleagues, friends and family using e-mail, video, photo or text messaging. They log and share health and fitness information and build up large personalised collections of music, photographs and other digital artefacts. A single individual may subscribe to services such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Flickr, Pinterest, Vine and LinkedIn—each of which has the capability to transmit different information to different audiences. This means that it becomes difficult to use these diverse accounts in order to reflect on our own self-image. Many people have described an acute sense of regret about some of the things they have posted online [2, 3] and report that they are gradually relinquishing control of their digital selves, effectively ‘losing awareness of what exists, where it is, who has access to it, who is accountable for it, and what is being done with it’ [4, p785]

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