This column originally appeared in Psychology Today on July 10, 2026.
We’ve come a long way from the 17th century, when you had to be Rembrandt to own a self-portrait. Now we have a lot of ways of representing who we are: selfies, CV’s, social media sites, family trees, and memoirs. Some people write their own obituaries. But we’re still missing a way of capturing the thing that most distinguishes each of us: our social networks. One measure of who we are is the people we relate to.
My recent 75th birthday got me wondering: If it takes a village to raise a child, what does it take to raise a 75-year-old? A city, maybe—at least a much larger number of people along the way, people who shape our lives. Though it’s more precious to me than my money or my possessions, both of which are relatively easy to count and value, my social network is hard to number or draw.
How could I make a picture of these relationships, or a sculpture? I tried starting a list of the people who currently play an important role in my life and quickly faced one of the reasons we don’t make our social self-portraits: it’s complicated.
If you’ve ever tried to list just your relatives in Ancestry.com, you know what I mean. You can spend many hours trying to fill in the boxes of your blood relatives over several generations. And yet, only some of those people matter to you currently. You could try your Facebook or LinkedIn lists, but that would only capture a small and self-selected slice of those who matter to you.
I soon realized that I’m an old guy with a problem that only a younger tech mind can help me with. But none of the younger, tech-wiser people I asked about this problem knew of a popular way to create a social self-portrait. So, assuming there has to be software for every good idea, I spent some time searching the web for software that could help: “social self-portrait,” “social networks software,” “graphic design for social self-portraits.” Nothing came close to what I have in mind.
Then I asked Google’s AI mode: “What software can help me create my social network self-portrait?” In a flash, it understood my question and gave me five suggestions: Kumu, Gephi, SocNetV, Creately, and Flourish. Kumu seems the most promising for my needs. (The others are too technical or for social scientists.)
The social self-portrait could develop into a fascinating new art form, possible now because of graphic design options that can manage big data. Mapping social networks is like mapping a matrix of molecules or the stars in a galaxy. Your bridge club might look like a benzene ring; your Facebook followers might look like the Milky Way.
I picture my people in clusters of different sizes and shapes, at various distances from me and from each other. It’s hard to imagine how I might arrange them in space, and harder still to imagine how this self-portrait changes over time.
Kumu organizes its social maps by “elements” (people or organizations), “connections” (the type of relationship), and “loops” (the interconnections among people or organizations, or clusters). Building these maps begins with a database. I’m going to try to start with the contacts in my phone or our Christmas card list Excel spreadsheet. Then I’ll have to weed out the people who don’t fit and add data I need, like the cluster(s) they belong to.
Can this old dog learn this new trick? Kumu promises I can, and they will help me.
Why should I bother? Why should you? For the same reason that we bother to take selfies, draw our faces, gaze in the mirror, write diaries and memoirs. We have always been fascinated by ourselves, and always will be. Now we have a chance to create another kind of self-portrait, one that represents the people who have made us who we are. Who cares how long it takes? Every time you add someone, you’re counting your blessings.