Yes Men and Data Mining

I think Yes Men might have changed my life just a little.

Maybe a lot. I, like pretty much everyone else, had no idea what the hell to expect when walking in - I passed by it a lot of times before, quietly laughing as I Rosie the Riveter decked out in Ronald McDonalds outfit. I was always unsure but I was more than happy to check it out - and I'm glad I did. Usually when you hear about secret clandestine organizations it's a bunch of jerks who wanna plot global domination: Skull and Bones Society, the Builderberg Group, The average High School Glee club....the list goes on. But this is one that restored a bit of my faith in humanity. This is the first one I've ever heard of that was actually doing something GOOD in the world.

Made me smile. I thoroughly enjoyed the board-room exhibit as well, the poster on the wall and some of the news clippings were absolutely great - I enjoyed it so much I do plan on going back with a few friends to show them how epic it is. It's a great way to do what the yes-men do best: expose the skewed agendas of the people who abuse their power the most. I think my favorite part was the ACTUAL letters they printed out as press releases and memo's. Shows that they're not just all talk!

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Data Mining came just this close to making me want to delete my FaceBook. However, the exhibit itself was a LOT less organized than the other one. Some of it was political (such as the frequency-counts of words in presidential addresses), some of it was cultural (such as the pamela anderson ditty), some of it was artistic (like the digital paintings) and some of it was musical (like the music written by pi. If you were a fan of it, check this out too - A breakdown written in pi as well!). It wasn't as striking as the first one, but it was still neat, I guess. Some of the pieces were pretty scare though - there was one piece that used an algorithm to report breakups being written on blogs...that's a bit weird, I think - but it's scary that someone can accurately find these things deep in the web, without even having to manually locate them! Data Mining is indeed something to watch out for...you never really CAN know who is spying on you.

It did get me thinking though, in the long run, that maybe we're all just a little bit too obsessive over how many people get to see what write. Every new friend I make winds up on FaceBook. Every time I have something, no matter how banal it is, it winds up on FaceBook. Half of my homework assignments reside there (artwork or audio tracks and such). Someone - government, employer, crazy ex - can easily find out pretty much anything about me or anyone else using obviously simple means.

Creepy. o.O;