Database Nation

Chapter 4. What Did You Do Today?

When I was teenager, I tried keeping a diary. I took out my pen every night before I went to sleep and wrote down the details of the previous day. I had just started dating and soon the book’s pages were filled with stories of my teenage romances: I’d write down who I liked and who I didn’t; who I had seen at school and who I had talked to on the phone. And, of course, I wrote down the details of my dates themselves: who they were with, where we had gone, what we had eaten, and what we had done.

After a month or so I had created quite an impressive historical record of my teenage exploits. But as time passed, my entries started getting shorter and shorter. It was just too much work to write down all of the details. Ultimately, my project collapsed under the weight of its own data.

Keeping that diary in today’s world would be much easier. Every time I buy something with a credit card, I get back a little yellow slip telling me the exact time and location of my purchase. I get a much more detailed receipt at my neighborhood supermarket that lists the name and size of everything in my shopping cart. My airline’s frequent flyer statement lists every city that I’ve flown to over the past year. Should I accidentally throw out the statement, all of this information is stored safely in numerous computer databanks.

Even my telephone calls are carefully recorded, tabulated, and presented to me at the end of each month. I remember in college when my girlfriend ...