About

Some Backstory#

myMultivac is a small personal project, designed to help me explore data in the world around us. It started as a self-hosted project, combining several open-sourced projects around home automation and private apps, such as Home Assistant, Plex and Firefly III. In the modern world, our digital footprint is vast, and it’s difficult to control or contain.

With the amount of data sent and received by nearly every app we use daily, huge organizations with deep pockets can leverage bits and pieces to build a frighteningly accurate picture of each user. Giving the user complete control of that information, and educating people about how it’s collected, collated and wrangled, is one of the primary goals of the myMultivac project.

Multivac’s Name#

Multivac is the name of a super-computer in several stories by Isaac Asimov. myMultivac was the name of my first home automation server, a raspberry pi running Home Assistant, inspired by these stories. I quickly learned that my little server could tell me so much more about my own habits and patterns: how often I was home, what time I woke up or went to bed, what I was listening to or watching… Smart devices can be used to track simple events that can unlock so much more about each of us.