Once upon a time, Personal Information Management was, well, personal. The “Personal Information” was phone
numbers and to-dos and notes and emails and personal papers and files and folders. The “Management” was about
how one organized what one had so that it could be re-found when it was needed to get our everyday work done.
Things have changed. Personal Information is still personal, but there is so very much more of it. My bookmarks. My
songs. My social network. And some of it is considerably more personal than it used to be. My locations as reported
by my smart phone. My weight as gathered by my wifi scale. My steps and heart rate sensed during my workouts.
Furthermore, as personal as it is, we are choosing to share much of it, for reasons that go far beyond simply getting our
everyday work done. “Management” seems like an increasingly inadequate word for what we do with our personal
information. In this talk I reflect on PIM, how it has changed over the two decades I’ve been studying it, and the
challenges I see ahead.
WordPress Websites for Engineers: Elevate Your Brand
Personal information ecologies erickson
1. Personal Information Ecologies:
PIM in the Age of Sensors and Social Networks
Thomas Erickson * Thanks to Jonathan Feinberg for his great service at http://wordle.net
Social Computing Group
IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
CSCW 2012 Workshop on Personal Information Management
Bellevue, Washington
February 12, 2012