MIT has this cool project/art exhibit going on called Metropath(ologies) dealing with "the social potential of new communication technologies.

One of the "exhibits" is Personas:

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one's aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

How could an egotist like myself resist finding out how the internet sees me? And in a way more aesthetically pleasing than Googling myself (and definitely less wrong sounding).  Well, first, I found that my full given name gave me the portrait of an artist in Indiana (and doing the name proud, by the way).  Then, I found out that the portraits were really random.  Multiple runs all produced very different portraits. 

Sage commentary on information in our digital age or is Personas
just really cool looking graphics being driven by a wonky search
engine?  It's also not clear what any of the terms actually mean.

Oh yeah, I also did portraits for Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, just for kicks*.


*The polite way to say "shits and giggles".
**Hat tip to the Science Cheerleader, Darlene Cavalier.