Online Assignment 4-5

You write something down and it stays. You search something and it remembers. The computer and its vast amount of knowledge on the user is a crazy thing to think about. You might forget about that one time you wrote on your friends Facebook wall for her 16th birthday, but Facebook wont. You might think you rarely search food and drinks on Google, but google knows exactly what you're interested in. This is an eyeopener to me because not only do we know so much about ourselves, but somewhere in your computer everything is being calculated about you, remembered and taken down. With Facebook and Google being two of the leading websites it is mesmerizing to me to see the detail they go through to tailor the need of their consumer and remember your past history.
When looking through Google I was intrigued to see what it would say about me and my interests. Sometimes when you hear that Google knows about you, you wonder if it is actually true or not. The first thing google recognized was that I was a girl between the age range of 18-24. It as scary to me how Google recognized my interests. They listed things such as dogs, celebrities, food & drink, movies,  fraternities/sororities/student societies. This is just a small amount of what google recognized my interests as. Everything they have is correct! I guess I honestly never thought that maybe by searching for recipes or menus, or looking up movie times that google would personally state my interests.
Now, when I came across Facebook's archive I was a little worried. My mom always told me that once your write something down on the internet, it stays there forever. She was certainly right with this one. When the folder downloaded and it had my name on it i was honestly a little bit freaked out. Here, every movement of mine since the time I started my Facebook account was remembered. I started to look at old pictures from years ago, and who I've poked versus whose poked me. This made me laugh as memories started coming back to me. One thing that confused me was that when I clicked on "contact info" I had an address book. My phone and computer are not synced so I do not even know how I have all my contacts on there.
I personally find living in the digital age can be frightening. Without having this assignment I would have no clue that you could look further into your google and Facebook accounts to see what you're like. I think with more and more technology this problem will only worsen as everything will become so monitored. However, this is also fascinating to me. There is so much out there to explore on the computer and what was once thought of as just a machine to crunch numbers into, is creating our world and everything we do in it.