By Ryan Singel
Cell phones know whom you called and which calls you dodged, but they
can also record where you went, how much sleep you got and predict
what you're going to do next.
At least, these are the capabilities of 100 customized phones given to
students and employees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology --
and they may be coming soon to your cell phone.
The phones were part of a Ph.D. project by MIT Media Lab researcher
Nathan Eagle, who handed out the devices as a way to document the
lives of students and employees of MIT, ranging from first-year
undergrads and MBA students to Media Lab employees and professors.
Eagle's Reality Mining project logged 350,000 hours of data over nine
months about the location, proximity, activity and communication of
volunteers, and was quickly able to guess whether two people were
friends or just co-workers. It also found that MBA students actually
do spend $45,000 a year to build monster Rolodexes, and that
first-year college students -- even those who attend MIT -- lead
chaotic lives.
He and his team were able to create detailed views of life at the
Media Lab, by observing how late people stayed at the lab, when they
called one another and how much sleep students got.
Given enough data, Eagle's algorithms were able to predict what people
-- especially professors and Media Lab employees -- would do next and
be right up to 85 percent of the time.
Eagle used Bluetooth-enabled Nokia 6600 smartphones running custom
programs that logged cell-tower information to record the phones'
locations. Every five minutes, the phones also scanned the immediate
vicinity for other participating phones. Using data gleaned from
cell-phone towers and calling information, the system is able to
predict, for example, whether someone will go out for the evening
based on the volume of calls they made to friends.
Eagle sees the project as a way to envision how mobile devices will
further change our lives, but also as a revolutionary new way to study
social networks.
The project was able to record how the lab as a whole responded to
events as disparate as an organization-wide deadline and the Red Sox's
stunning World Series win in 2004.
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,68263,00.html
Monty Solomon (monty@roscom.com)