My Life, And Past, As Seen Through Google's Dashboard
What is Google Dashboard? In short, it is a one-stop shop that links to all the different buckets of your data stored by Google Inc.'s services. From your first Gmail account onward, Google has been collecting an amazing amount of information from you, and Dashboard is where you go to find it.
Strangely enough, the easiest way to find your Google Dashboard is to go to Google.com and search for 'Google Dashboard.' Google created the Dashboard in 2009 so its users could manage all their privacy settings in one place, but this longtime Google customer had never used it.
Once you find your Google Dashboard, you're not going to look away. That's because the reality of how much history you share with Google can be unnerving to confront, especially for heavy Web users.
Before we get into it, a few caveats: First, this data can only be collected when you are logged in to a Google service. Second, Google gives you options to turn the collection off, or delete archived data. And third, access to all this information is password-protected. But once you get past the login screen, the amount of information there is staggering.
Today, it isn't just all your emails and chat logs, but everything searched for, every YouTube video you watched, all the Web pages you visited, calls you made with Google Voice, even a day-by-day history of every location you have looked up on Google Maps.
The idea that all of this data exists as a mass of ones and zeros deep in a server farm in California, being studied by disinterested robots to serve up better search results and more relevant ads, is something most of us can process in the abstract.
But the fact that it is all viewable right now, on a user-friendly Web page complete with its own search service (yes, you can run Google searches on your own Web history), is something else entirely. For example, I searched for every website I've ever visited containing the word 'octopus.' And yes, the results were wonderful.
They were also a sign of disturbing things to come. Are you really ready to see a meticulous recreation of that YouTube binge you went on late one night in 2009?
That's an appetizer compared with your search history -- a year-by-year evolution of the biggest and smallest questions you believed the Internet could answer. Looking back on searches from years gone by will give you pangs of nostalgia. It will also give you a deep conviction that nobody else should ever see it.
The kind of analytics you can perform on your own online history is impressive, but the idea anybody else who manages to get your Google password could also do it is eye-opening. The bad outcomes seem endless, from digital blackmail to much more multilayered forms of identity theft.
There's another side to this, of course. Our online histories, in the long run, could become one of our most cherished memories. In 20 years' time they will paint a picture of our past more detailed than anything our brains are capable of.
And this is based on what is being stored right now, before wearable computers and self-driving cars. As time goes on, our Google Dashboards will tell us more and more about who we are, and who we were.
Tom Gara
谷歌資訊主頁：一切都在這裡
谷
歌
資訊主頁(Google Dashboard)是什麼？簡而言之，這是個一站式服務，能夠連接到谷歌(Google
Inc.)各種服務儲存的你的全部數據。從你的第一個Gmail電子郵件帳戶開始，谷歌一直在從你那裡收集數量驚人的數據，這些數據都能在資訊主頁上找
到。相當奇怪的是，找到谷歌資訊主頁最簡便的方法是去谷歌網站(Google.com)上搜索“谷歌資訊主頁”。谷歌在2009年創建了這個資訊主頁，以方便用戶在一個地方管理所有隱私設置，但是我這個谷歌老用戶從未使用過它。
一旦你找到自己的谷歌資訊主頁，你就再也不會將目光轉向別處。這是因為谷歌記錄的你的過往數據的數量之多會讓你感到緊張不安，尤其是那些重度網絡使用者。
我們很多人都長時間使用谷歌的產品，如谷歌地圖、郵箱以及遊戲等。當谷歌收集到所有這些數據後會從中了解到些什麼？《華爾街日報》的Tom Gara以自己為例講述了谷歌Dashboard對自己的了解程度。
這裡不僅有你全部的電子郵件和聊天記錄，還有你所有的搜索記錄，你看過的所有YouTube視頻，瀏覽過的所有網頁，使用谷歌之音(Google Voice)進行的通話，甚至每天使用谷歌地圖(Google Maps)搜索的每個地點。
所有這些數據都以大量二進制文件的形式存在於加州一個服務器群中，由公正不阿的機器人負責觀察，以期實現更好的搜索結果和更多相關廣告。這個概念是我們大多數人都能抽象形成的。
但現在在一個自備搜索服務的人性化網頁上（沒錯，你可以在自己的歷史記錄中運行谷歌搜索），這些全部可以看到，這完全是另一回事了。舉例來說，我搜索所有我曾訪問過的含有“章魚”一詞的網站。很好，出來了很棒的搜索結果。
同時這也表明，令人不安的問題即將到來。你真的願意看到自己2009年某天晚上在YouTube上放縱情形的真實再現嗎？
跟你的搜索歷史相比──你認為互聯網能回答的各種大小問題經年累月的積累，這不過是道開胃菜。回首往昔的搜索給帶給你懷舊的痛苦，也會給你堅定的信念：一定不能讓別人看到。
你可以對自己的在線歷史進行的這種分析令人印象深刻，但一想到任何人只要獲得你的谷歌賬戶密碼就可以做到，這就讓人吃驚了。其惡果似乎無窮無盡，從數字勒索到更多形式的身份竊取不一而足。
當然了，事情還有另外一面。長期來看，我們的在線記錄可能成為我們最寶貴的回憶之一。20年後，它們將會描繪我們的過去，比我們的大腦所能記憶的更為詳盡。
而這一點是基於現在正在被存儲的東西，在可佩帶式計算機和自動駕駛汽車出現之前。隨著時間的流逝，我們的谷歌資訊主頁將告訴我們越來越多的關於我們是什麼樣的人，以及曾經是什麼人的信息。
Tom Gara
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