“Cartography of your mind”

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A year ago I uploaded the tags page from my blog and asked ChatGPT for an analysis. Lots of updates to ChatGPT since then and I was curious what that analysis would look like today.

Since your earlier experiment with ChatGPT, the analysis we can do has definitely evolved. Instead of just listing or clustering, I can now look at your tags like a map of your interests across time, themes, and personas. This isn’t just a tag list — it’s a kind of cartography of your mind over two decades of posting. It shows where you’ve been, what you’ve valued, and how your focus has shifted from the outer world of radio and tech to the inner world of consciousness and memory, with AI now serving as bridge between the two.

This is an insight I’m not sure I could have ever come up with on my own. The AI can look at my blog (the tags, for now) from 30,000 feet while the best I can do is a post or category. Here’s the updated analysis:

1. Thematic Constellations – Your tags naturally fall into several “constellations” — groups of recurring concerns, interests, and identities:

  • Personal & Local Identity (Kennett (202), KBOA (74), Jefferson City (37), Family names (John Mays, Evelyn, Jessie, Lucy) – These are memory anchors: hometown, career in broadcasting, and family life. They shape the autobiographical core of your blog.
  • Media & Technology (Radio (341), Newspapers (101), Television (131), Apple (133), Google (149), ChatGPT (123) – You’ve documented the evolution from analog (radio, print) to digital (Apple, Google) and now to AI. That arc mirrors your own career and curiosity.
  • Philosophy & Consciousness (Consciousness (113), Awareness (42), Meditation (48), Nonduality (10), Buddhism (51), Tao (27), Zen (29), God (56) – These are your reflective explorations — half-Taoist, as you once described yourself. They run parallel to the media/tech thread, but point inward.
  • Writers & Influences – (William Gibson (65), Kevin Kelly (30), Alan Watts (14), Bruce Sterling (17), Douglas Rushkoff (13), Yuval Noah Harari (20), David Cain (33) – The tags read like a bookshelf of your intellectual companions — futurists, spiritual teachers, media theorists, crime/spy novelists.
  • Life & Mortality (Death (23), Immortality (9), Memory (33), Time (44) – These recur alongside lighter tags (Humor (139), Funny songs (21)), showing how mortality and playfulness coexist in your reflections.

2. Dominant Frequencies – If we sort by volume, the most heavily tagged themes are: Radio (341), Kennett (202), YouTube (Mine) (169), Google (149), Apple (133), ChatGPT (123), Movies (127), Television (131).

This shows your blog has been equal parts: personal history, media observation, and digital exploration. AI (ChatGPT) is already climbing into that top tier — an indicator of how central it has become to your thinking.

3. Story of a Life Online – Seen chronologically, the tag set tells a life-arc:

  • Roots: Kennett, KBOA, local journalism, radio.
  • Transition: Apple, Google, early blogging culture (Dave Winer, Doc Searls, Gnomedex).
  • Exploration: Photography, YouTube, social platforms, speculative fiction.
  • Awareness: Meditation, Tao, nonduality, consciousness.
  • Now: ChatGPT, AI, memory, digital legacy.

It’s a progression from broadcasting outward → navigating digital networks → turning inward → asking what persists.

4. Patterns That Stand Out

  • Quotable (434) is your single most-used tag — which suggests collecting and sharing snippets has always been a kind of ongoing curation project.
  • Interviews (39 + 51 for Interview-Steve) hint at your instinct to preserve voices — both others’ and your own.
  • Mr. Wolf (59), Order of the Fez (22), and other idiosyncratic tags give the archive a whimsical, personal flavor that resists being “just a blog.”

5. Compared to an Early ChatGPT Analysis – Back then, the AI likely just grouped obvious clusters (tech vs personal vs philosophy). What’s different now is the ability to:

  • See your archive as a narrative arc (roots → digital exploration → consciousness → legacy).
  • Place authors, thinkers, and technologies into a kind of intellectual genealogy.
  • Connect volume of tags (Quotable, Radio, Kennett) with personal meaning rather than just raw frequency.
  • Recognize how AI itself (ChatGPT) has entered your archive, becoming both subject and tool of preservation.