Keynote Speaker
Thomas Erickson
IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
Personal Information Ecologies: PIM in the Age of Sensors and Social Networks
Once upon a time, Personal Information Management was, well, personal.
The "Personal Information" was phone numbers and to-dos and notes and
emails and personal papers and files and folders. The "Management"
was about how one organized what one had so that it could be re-found
when it was needed to get our everyday work done. Things have changed.
Personal Information is still personal, but there is so very much more
of it. My bookmarks. My songs. My social network. And some of it is
considerably more personal than it used to be. My locations as reported
by my smart phone. My weight as gathered by my wifi scale. My steps and
heart rate sensed during my workouts. Furthermore, as personal as it is,
we are choosing to share much of it, for reasons that go far beyond
simply getting our everyday work done. "Management" seems like an
increasingly inadequate word for what we do with our personal information.
In this talk I reflect on PIM, how it has changed over the two decades
I've been studying it, and the challenges I see ahead.