When Madeline sent over the Google Drive folder containing all of her personal data, I kept thinking about those common refrains spoken in conversations around digital surveillance: "I've done nothing wrong," some will say, or "I have nothing to hide." Overall, yeah, this may very well be true. But that doesn't mean there aren't still things you would probably rather keep private. Asked to create a "portrait" of Madeline based on her data usage, I wondered what kind of files I might find that felt like the "would rather keep private" kind...

As I moved from her Google Search history to her Instagram messages to her Spotify playlists, I felt like I was slowly putting together a puzzle of a person. I was unsure what aspect I wanted to focus on for her portrait until I found a folder nested inside of her Apple data that held every entry she had typed into her Notes app since 2017. Reading through that felt criminally invasive, like reading her diary. Or maybe more like reading her mind. I felt like her heart was on the screen in a way it can never quite be when we're sharing content online that's intended for an unknowable, ever expanding audience. The notes she typed over the years into Apple's app on her phone or laptop were clearly always intended for herself and herself alone.

Combing through the files, I learned that her mom passed away when she was 13 years old. She gets her eyebrows waxed and recently got her ears pierced. She previously attended NYU before transferring to Brown. I learned that she's Jewish. In the fall of 2018, she travelled abroad, got high, and made new friends. She's dairy free. She reads often, wears makeup, wants to write a play, and is part of a sorority. She's extremely driven and self-reflective. She actively questions herself and the world around her.

None of this information was gleaned because her phone tracked her location, listened in on her conversations, or analyzed her search/browsing history. All of these details were self reported and recorded by Madeline herself. Thoughts, to-do lists, dreams, important addresses... it was all written there for her own safe keeping.

In her manifesto Glitch Feminism, Legacy Russell writes that "the machine is a material through which we process our bodily experience." A physical notebook, journal, or diary has long served as a way for us to process our experiences, but what does that exercise look like (and feel like) when our digital version of those tools is uploaded to the cloud?

I'd like to end by highlighting some words Madeline typed into her Notes app on December 10, 2020: "Ghost in the machine. What is the soul, the self, if you can open up the brain?"

Please move through this site with care and compassion.