Patterns

I am currently playing with an app that purports to work out how I spend my time. It does do some clever stuff trying to work out what is work, what is commute etc. but given that I work all over the place, and often in cafe's, the patterns are almost meaningless. I could intervene and manually adjust times, locations, and activities, but life's too short.

Amazon are pretty good at working out patterns in my purchasing – usually too good as my impulse purchases show. But a recent purchase of a pair of fairy wings by one of my daughters on my account will cause mayhem unless I, again, take the time to manually intervene.

Both of these are frustrating but not the end of the world. They do however raise concern about the patterns I leave that are interpreted by others – marketers, insurers, governments etc. They too will be imprecise and subject to error and misinterpretation and with what greater consequence than a little inefficiency?