MIT Media Lab has developed a new online project, called Immersion, which takes your Gmail metadata and turns it into a map linking together people in your life.
Gmail users can grant Immersion access to their From, To, CC and Timestamp fields - dodging e-mail subject lines and contents - and create a detailed account based on people in your email history.
The project went public on June 30th after running in beta form at the Media Lab lobby, with 500 people trialling it.
In an interview with The Boston Globe, head of the Macro Connections group at the MIT Media Lab Cesar Hidalgo said, "When you see it all together, it is, in a way, an out-of-body experience. You're seeing all of your network and you'rse seeing yourself out of it and you're seeing it from afar and you're seeing it one picture."
Hidalgo goes on to express that for him, metadata is an emotional issue. A users metadata is all about interactions between people and those interactions are associated with our emotions.
Users can grant Immersion access to their Gmail account and can delete the metadata, which includes a compressed email metadata and user profile, after use. Alternatively, they can save it in a secure system.
Watch the video below to find out more about Immersion.
Image: NPR
Source: Immersion, The Boston Globe
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