Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

The Cloud Mirror from eric gradman on Vimeo.

I've been drawn to the new augmented reality stuff that is going around. I think this is sure to be an up and coming technology that'll be used a lot in advertising.
 
I recently came across one in particular that raises many questions: The Cloud Mirror. It's an art installation that brings the awkwardness back into being social. For far too long the vastness that is the Internet has hidden all of those uber personal things we don't want everyone and their mother to know. This installation plucks many unknowns from social media's past and plops them right in front of the user and their friends, putting the redness back into the cheeks of Web nerds everywhere.
 
It also asks the question: How private is social media? Is it acceptable to have one's personal data and information out for all the world to see? Imagine for a second all of this personal data following you around. All of your private info much like a tag cloud around your body moving as you do. It seems a lot like movies we've seen in the past. Stranger than Fiction, for example.
 
I also found the potential really interesting in this art study. There is a lot to be debated within this movie, whether it be the privatizing social media aspect of it, technology evolution, or even assigning barcodes to your identity. All of these issues could be argued in this movie.
 
The Mirror Cloud project's main theme speaks to a good point. In the social media realm, deep recesses of the Internet and the blogosphere, it's not certain how private your data is. I'm not sure if most people just aren't aware that they're making all this data available to the public. I think the majority of the public thinks that it goes to some magical place somewhere. But the truth of the matter is that all of your personal data is housed within a computer probably somewhere in Silicon Valley and can be looked at and anytime, by anyone.
 
All of my Facebook information is up to date and truthful. I even choose to leave some of my images tagged less than tasteful up. But I'm a bit of a rarity. To most people, having distasteful things said about them, weird pictures taken of them, or even false information on the Internet about them could potentially cause a personal social meltdown.
 
The fact of the matter is that there's not trickery involved here. That data was posted by you, the user. It is ultimately the user that has control over what the public sees and doesn't see. I feel that it is often ignorance, or lack of awareness that causes these social shocks when technology uses this data in a clever way.
 
How would you react if somebody broadcast your posts in an open public place with your picture attached?
 
Dave Knoph