Technology Review: What Your Phone Knows About You - The Diigo Meta page

• 20 Dec 07
  

  Yule Heibel

  Sandy Pentland, professor of media arts and sciences at MIT, talks about "reality mining."
  - this is page 2 of a 2-page article

  cell_phones mit_techreview sandy_pentland socialcomputing socialnetworks socialtheory

  • You can really see things in a way that you never could before--a God's-eye view. One of the examples I've been stuck on recently relates to how transformative Google Earth has been. Imagine having something where you can see all the people moving around on a map. Think about SARS in Hong Kong. What if in a particular apartment building, nobody left for work that day? You could identify a major health problem in 12 hours instead of two weeks. Another example is the social health of communities. It's known that social integration, or how well people mix, correlates with whether or not a community is thriving. With reality mining, you can actually see social integration, as it happens or doesn't happen. Once everyone can see it, then you can start to have transparent political discussions. Why isn't the mayor putting more sidewalks and crosswalks in this area? Could more community events make the area more livable?

    • 

      Yule Heibel on 2007-12-20

      - that does presuppose that EVERYONE has a cell phone, though, and I'd bet that there are plenty of instances where populations that are vectors for contagious diseases don't typically carry cell phones, for example. Not to mention that (as the interviewer says in the next question), "this all gets very creepy very fast."
  • But we definitely need to talk about it and figure out a new deal for privacy--to use this data and not be abused.

    • 

      Yule Heibel on 2007-12-20

      - d'uh, no kidding, Sherlock!
  • 2 more annotations...
  • • You know, excuse the example, but I've been in a downtown somewhere and I don't know where the nearest bathroom is, or it's raining and I'd like a taxi. I'd give up a little bit of personal information to find these things.

      • 

        Yule Heibel on 2007-12-20

        - but there are urban services being introduced where you can pull that information from your cell phone, w/out giving your cell phone all sorts of access about yourself.
    • Reality mining will help us see ourselves and, in an anonymous way, compare ourselves to peers. And I see organizations and companies using this to help people collaborate more effectively and do their jobs more efficiently.

      • 

        Yule Heibel on 2007-12-20

        - jeepers, just when I thought Michel Foucault had become really unfashionable, here're shades of Discipline and Punish! It's like Jeremy Bentham's Panopticum gone digital! Brrr...

Public Stiky Notes

• 
  Yule Heibel on 2007-12-20
  - that does presuppose that EVERYONE has a cell phone, though, and I'd bet that there are plenty of instances where populations that are vectors for contagious diseases don't typically carry cell phones, for example. Not to mention that (as the interviewer says in the next question), "this all gets very creepy very fast."
• 
  Yule Heibel on 2007-12-20
  - d'uh, no kidding, Sherlock!
• 
  Yule Heibel on 2007-12-20
  - but there are urban services being introduced where you can pull that information from your cell phone, w/out giving your cell phone all sorts of access about yourself.
• 
  Yule Heibel on 2007-12-20
  - jeepers, just when I thought Michel Foucault had become really unfashionable, here're shades of Discipline and Punish! It's like Jeremy Bentham's Panopticum gone digital! Brrr...

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