Can I login into you?

Doesn't really matter whether you say yes or no today because it's only AD 2010. But we are not far from the days where you would say "I can't believe that my best friend wanted to login into me during the blind date she set up for me!"

What does logging into you really mean? For starters, it's a way for others to see and hear exactly what you are seeing and hearing in real time. It can also include advanced features such as ability for others to observe what you are feeling in realtime by studying your body temperature, heart rate, brain activity patterns, etc. You get the idea.

No. I'm not smoking pot and I think it's a real scenario from a not so distant future. Five billion people on this planet today have cellphones and very soon more than half of them will be capable of taking a photo or video with the cellphone. Imagine a technology that can shoot and transmit stereo HD video with voice in realtime embedded into these devices you own. Anyone who has access to this realtime video is kind of logging into you.

Do you want to guess the industry that would first invest in such a technology. Yes, you guessed it right. It's the industry that still accounts to more than 30% of rich media content on the Internet. Porn.

Now sit back and imagine what you would do with such a technology. Login into your favorite Hollywood star, login into your friend for her wedding instead of attending the celebrations, login into the archives of yourself form your past, login into the that guy having...

PS: Apple already have several patents on "automated mood recognition" for handheld devices.

How well do you know yourself?

What would you say if someone asks you "Hey! What kind of person are you"? Not in an interview, but in an honest situation probably after a few drinks. And what do you think your friends would say about you? Not in front of you but at those parties that you missed or even better at that dinner your were not invited to.

Do things you say about you match with the things your friends say about you? You might think that you are very close to people and your friends think that you are too intrusive. It gets complex when you expand beyond friends. Your hiking partner might perceive you as a dare devil and your boss perceives you as exceptionally risk averse. Conflicting views huh!

Does this mean that we have multiple personalities? May be it just suggests that the perception of your personality varies on who you talk with - thyself, your friends, your family, your boss and so on.


Wouldn't it be nice to know how people perceive you? Corporations spend millions of dollars to answer this. Why can't we as individuals start thinking in those lines?

End of the day, I think it would be an interesting world if you can know thyself as people know you. Here's your business idea - develop a software application that asks your friends (from Facebook?) to define your personality type and presents you with anonymous results. Any investors or software geeks who want to take a stab at this? The dating sites can benefit from such an application. They still make a match based on who you think you are and not based on who you really are (those eHarmony ads!).

PS: Blogged from Acela train (yeah! it finally has wifi) on route to Boston from NYC, after looking at this stranger sitting in the next row on who I almost had a “personality opinion”.