A bigger internet?  Just read an interesting article on Swedish firm Polar Rose’s plan to use facial recognition software to identify people in otherwise anonymous photographs around the internet.  With their index, captions will become less relevant as the system itself identifies the subjects of photographs with some degree of accuracy, reportedly currently around 90%. 

I’m pretty much just amazed.  I’m sure the article’s points about loss of privacy are well founded, but at the same time, the possibilities for a realistically indexed set of images are just too big.  Historical and geneological research, at least for the 19th and 20th centuries are going to have huge new tools. Who knows what links facial recognition indices will generate off my parents’ online family gallery, which contains images dating back to 1864. I’d be very curious to know where my face has appeared, especially in the background of coverage of a few events when I was still working for Diplomatic Security.  I know I was incorrectly captioned pretty much every time the Bolivian press put a shot of me in print – it would be nice to see a few of those old clippings if they’re online anywhere.

It would also be interesting to have my own galleries more accessible through the search engines.  I’ve captioned photographs as well as I could, but just don’t have names for a lot of people at public events.  Despite that, I know from server statistics and the occasional e-mail that people, and parents of people, regularly search the internet for photos of themselves and their families, and wouldn’t mind getting my photographs into the hands of people who’d enjoy them a bit more often.

There will be a downside.  I’m sure there are photos of me out there that I don’t want tied to the business attorney image I try and present to clients.  I know because I put some quite a few of them out there.    That said, tough.  Many others are going to have the same issues too.  I certainly hope it doesn’t result in a more boring and sterile internet, but maybe a better understanding that everyone has a life and a history.  In that sense, there will certainly be a loss of privacy.  But I’ve gotta think that it will still be a great new tool.