Personas is a project created by Aaron Zinman for the Metropath(ologies) exhibit at the MIT Museum. When you enter your name in the dialog box, Personas attempts to build a visualization of your online identity using information accessed by the internet and natural language processing. The result is a color coded diagram that “shows how the internet sees you.” Mine is above.

It’s a neat idea even if it isn’t entirely accurate. There aren’t too many people with my name, so I imagine the results are mostly related to me. However, if my name was John Smith it would be a different story. But perhaps that is the point. We can’t always control what results pop up in Google when someone searches our name, so how the web views us (and others who share the same name) influences how others see us as well, for better or worse.

link: personas