A Pointillist Painting

Clive Thompson in the IHT (via @pgillin): This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each
individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own,
even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little
snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your
friends' and family members' lives, like thousands of dots making a
pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the
real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the
sandwiches she was eating.

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