Dan Farber of CNet has a good blog post up on what he calls the “lifestreaming” of Barack Obama.  He writes:

Barack Obama will be the most shadowed president in history, and it won’t be just the Secret Service and press corps surrounding him.  Citizens and paparazzi armed with camera phones and a variety of other multimedia devices will chronicle every movement he makes in public and post it online.

In the article, Farber points to Politico 44, a micro-site by the Politico about the Presidential transition.  The site contains a feature that tracks Obama’s activities day-by-day and minute-by-minute.  Mind you they aren’t just highlighting the big stuff, they are literally tracking Obama’s every movement in real time.   Here are some sample entries to whet your appetite:

10:07 am on November 22: “Obama worked out at the gym for 78 minutes and was back home by 11:30 EST.”

9:38 am on November 21: “Obama arrives back home to change clothes.”

6:35 pm on November 20: “The motorcade leaves the transition office and heads to Regents Park apartments, where Obama reportedly has his haircut at the apartment of his friend,  Mike Signator.”

7:11 pm on November 19: “Obama is inside the Lookinglass Theatre in downtown Chicago.”

The feature reminds me of Gawker Stalker, a controversial feature on Gawker.com that allows users to submit celebrity information on encounters with celebrities.  I don’t really have any big point here, other than that the unprecedented interest in Obama himself combined with the rapid sharing of information brought on by the Internet will make Obama probably the most scrutinized and tracked person in the history of time.

The level of transparency this will bring is exciting, but it is hard not to worry that things are going to be taken way too far.

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