“Unfortunately, no one can be told what The Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.” - Morpheus

Web 2.0, RSS, and the technologies which form the buzz around the second Internet bubble are fantastic. They’re far-reaching, powerful, democratic, and liberating. They’re also incredibly dangerous if you aren’t aware of what you are doing. I want to say something up front that I will repeat at the end.

When you turn on an Internet-connected device, you are an actor approaching the stage that is the world, and everyone is watching. Treat it as such.

Kristen Crusius, one of the next generation’s digerati, generously volunteered to allow me to demonstrate the power of Web 2.0 - and why it’s also the Matrix 2.0. A full participant in Web 2.0 reveals just about everything you need to know about them - and probably more than a few things you didn’t know about them. This post answers a question I had: does Web 2.0 let you know too much about someone?

We’re going to go on a journey together, and see just how much of one person’s life is exposed via Web 2.0 for the world to see.

UPDATED: This article was updated August 1, 2007.

All you need is an entry point into the grid, a place to start, and a place to record your findings. That place is Google.

http://www.google.com/search?q=kristen%20crusius

Immediately, we find a blog (#1 result), a LinkedIn profile (#3 result), a personal home page (#5 result) and a Twitter profile (#7 result). Fire up Google reader. Subscribe to the feeds for the blog and Twitter. Now you know what Kristen is doing on a moment to moment basis. You know what else is on her mind because you’re subscribed to her blog. Vox has photos. Vox Photos have RSS. Subscribe. Now you have images.

Ready to step it up? LinkedIn will tell you publicly where she works - and it’s up to date.

Kristen also goes by the online nickname Kroosh. Feed into Google.

Google says MySpace is the place for friends, and Kroosh has MySpace. MySpace also has demographic data to build a profile, rounding out more of the picture. Here’s what Kroosh says about herself on MySpace:

Female
21 years old
Brighton, Massachusetts
United States

Interests
Nifty gadgets, technology, The New England Revolution, dancing like a fool, food, mix tapes, rock climbing, ’salsa con queso’, collecting literature, eyes, seeing the clouds from the top instead of the bottom, photography, flying, darkroom developing, blogging, doooodles. and Ooooooooooooos.

Kroosh!’s Details
Status: Single
Here for: Networking, Friends
Orientation: Straight
Hometown: Northfield, CT
Body type: Average
Ethnicity: White / Caucasian
Zodiac Sign: Pisces
Smoke / Drink: No / Yes
Children: Someday
Education: In college

Kroosh!’s Schools
New England Institute Of Arts And Communication
Brookline,Massachusetts
Graduated: 2007
Degree: Bachelor’s Degree
Major: Interactive Media Design
Clubs: None currently

2004 to Present
Litchfield High School
Litchfield,Connecticut
Graduated: 2004
Student status: Alumni
Degree: High School Diploma
Clubs: Litchfield Hills Rowing Club

Kroosh!’s Companies
Exploit Boston
Boston, MA US
content producer, lime cutter extrodinare
webmonkey

Game Crazy
Arlington, US
Management

We know where Kristen goes to school, where she graduated from, her relationship status, and geographic locations of her job and home. We know her age, but not necessarily her birthdate. Wait, someone just posted a happy birthday notice on her MySpace profile and it’s timestamped. Now we have complete date of birth, too - which incidentally is enough to commit identity theft for some financial services.

Kroosh also has a Flickr page (result #10). Flickr has RSS. Subscribe. Did you know Flickr has geotagging of photos? Associate a Flickr photo with a listing on Craigslist or other geo-aware sites, and you can now draw a map of where photos are being taken, giving you a geographic idea of where a person is. Of course, if a person tells you, then you don’t need to ask the Matrix, like these twitters:

I’m in north stonington?. Nothing here but houses, pizza and a random amazing.net store..huh? 39 minutes ago from txt

Ok twitter, I’m off to the spa at Mohegan. Till tomorrow… 22 minutes ago from txt

Now we know what Kristen’s doing, what she’s seeing, what she’s taking photos of - including herself, where she is, and where she’ll be. To keep informed, we set up Google Alerts and Google Blogsearch alerts on her name and online nickname. Subscribe to those feeds. Technorati tells us similar things, but sometimes goes places Google does. Subscribe not only to her name, but the URLs you’ve found so far, and you now have a constellation, a cloud, of everything and everyone talking about her. Ex-boyfriend has a gripe about her? You’ll know. Wild party at her school with embarrassing photos? You’ll know. She’ll be at a certain address at a certain time? You’ll know.

What makes this different and more powerful than ever before is that by subscribing to all these RSS feeds, the machine gives us constant, always-watching updates about Kristen, no matter where she goes. As long as she’s using the machine, the machine tells us.

We could go on, but we won’t. This is more than enough. The reality is that Web 2.0 is in many ways Matrix 2.0, a vast collection of data and machines that knows more about you than any other human being, and in reality may know more about you than you do, because human memory is fallible and selective, whereas Google cached results and other services are fallible but inclusive. Once it is in the machine, it is nearly impossible to get it out.

I started out by saying “When you turn on an Internet-connected device, you are an actor approaching the stage that is the world, and everyone is watching. Treat it as such.” Once you set foot inside Matrix 2.0, the machine knows exactly what you tell it, and so does everyone else - and most of the time, you’re not aware of just what you’re telling it. Not a single thing in this blog post was found by any source other than publicly available information, and it’s enough that you can know more about Kristen Crusius than at any time previous.

The tools of Web 2.0 look so friendly, with their reflective pastel logos and rounded corners and RSS feeds for your convenience, but underneath that is an ocean of data about you - volunteered by you - that in aggregate tells someone - anyone - too much. Before you turn on the Internet device, put yourself in the role of an actor and tell the world only what you want the world to know about you - and that includes everyone in the world, friends and foes, allies and enemies, present and future employers, professors and students, upstanding citizens and online predators.

What are you telling the Matrix 2.0?

“The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes.”