I’m reading a book in my company’s software book club called ‘The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies‘ (Kindle edition, of course).   Its points is discussion of a new inflection point in technological and economic growth, driven by advances in computing, robotics, and Internet of Things that were unheard of just a few years ago.  This past week’s discussion focused on exponential increases in computing power (things that follow Moore’s Law double every 18 months to two years, which leads to exponential growth over a relatively short period) and the impact of the digitization of _everything_.

I tried to think of a type of information that exists that isn’t digitized.  Thoughts aren’t, at least directly, until you consider purchasing decisions, search terms, and observations of browsing patterns.  Health records are (and I wish more was available that way), where I’ve been may be (I turn off my location history, thank you very much), my banking information is, photos of my family are, my postings can be used to determine whether I’m happy or sad (spending a bit of time exploring text analytics for sentiment analysis lately), my purchase history on both websites and at brick-and-mortars is…  Yes, I still use a Target credit card; no, if you won’t give me a 5% discount or better I won’t use your store affinity card – pay me for my data at a reasonable price!

I attempt to keep as much of this segregated as I can…  my doctor doesn’t need to know my beer purchasing history, for example.  (Or maybe she’d like to, but I’ll still keep it separate – I prefer porters and stouts to ambers or pils, should there be any particular health benefits conferred..)

But all of this starts to lead me to think about how I contribute to digitization explicitly, through blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Evernote, Google+, Google Groups, LinkedIn …. am I doing these well, to get the most bang for my digitized efforts?  I’m still thinking of more places where I leave electronic droppings…   Considering a post series talking about how I use each of the above, with the idea that readers could suggest better models or other tools.