What about me?… The Internet of Me

Take a step back and see the little people

There’s nothin there but the words that make the big people big

So listen, as they whisper;

“What about me? …”

(Lyrics from “What about me” by Moving Pictures)

So who’s internet do you live in? Chances are it’s not your’s…

More likely, you’re living in the internet of Google or Facebook — empires that paradoxically, are a far cry from the decentralised neutrality of the Internet and WWW upon which they were founded.

There’s no doubt they have provided us all with wonderful personal, social and professional benefits, in the form of information access and connectedness, to a world our predecessors would struggle to have imagined. However, this largesse is not as free as we might like to think, and a whole lot less free as they now seek to appease their shareholder expectations.

In our willingness to consume their “free” public goods we, we implicitly pay with our identities and our personal data. We are pay by offering up our online behaviour, our social networks, the content of our social communications, and what we like and don’t like… just for starters. This is the fuel that powers the “inference economies” that drive their revenues.

So, in the words of the song, “what about me?”.

What about the “Internet of Me”?

The IoM is our individual internet digital identities and presence — everything about, and created by, all of our respective digital “me’s” — and that’s a lot of digital stuff.

And for the most part we don’t own it or control how it is used. If you have any doubts, take a look — The Terms of Service you haven’t read…

So with Google dominating desktop, mobile and tablet search (Desktop Search Engine Global Market Share & Mobile-Tablet Search Engine Global Market Share), and Facebook (or QZone in China) on social networks (Social Networks by Active Users), the chances are they run your IoM, as they do mine.

That doesn’t mean we should all rush to anonymity, but the IoM is about recognising the value of our personal sovereignty when it comes to our data and our digital identity. It’s about recognising our data as currency and making informed decisions about how we choose to spend it.

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