My Contact Database

I keep a contact database, so I can remember who all my friends are ("Crikey, I haven't spoken to Peter for AGES!"), and try to be able to manage knowing lots of people. Before my database, I lost contact with lots of interesting people. Also, I'd like to connect them up a bit more.

Today, I have roughly 230 people in it. I used to store name, phone number, address, gender, personality ratings (very subjective), interests, and personal relationships, in a very structured way such that I could execute powerful queries. I've stopped maintaining this information, except for people who I'm satisfied understand deeply all the possible consequences, and still think it's a good idea. For everyone else, I store phone numbers and keywords to remind me of who they are (if I don't know them very well and can't put name to face) in a disorganized way that makes it hard to utilize for sophisticated database queries.

I wrote an explanation of the perceived privacy problems with the database. I don't think my database really raises any new privacy problems. But it does raise the question of privacy... and it seems that no-one really thinks about privacy if it's not on a computer. (They should!) eg: Do you give a second's thought to people storing your phone number on their cell phone? What if a stalker, conman, or whatever steals the phone? I haven't met anyone who objects to being in my cell phone, but plenty who do object to being in my database.

I gave a talk on my friends/contacts database, and the social issues around it. Lecture slides: html, tex source, DVI.


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