If you haven't heard of reality mining, its an interesting idea where interactions are recorded and measured in different social situations, such as an office setting. I'm not sure the exact conversations are recorded, but at least the fact that an interaction took place and its duration. Benjamin Waber (MIT PhD student) conducts interesting research in this new field.
So there's going to be skeptics, probably rightly so. Yes, in the wrong-unethical-devious-Orwellian hands someone could determine very private and damaging information about you. But I'd like to forgo the privacy conversation and dream a little bit about the possibilities of this new field:
Schools: What if the school psychologist (for those districts wealthy enough to have one) could analyze communication networks to identify isolated students? Maybe help prevent events like the VA Tech shooting? Columbine? Or just help a kid that's lonely or having problems at home?
Psychologist: How about shrinks? I'm thinking about people with family/marital problems, allowing the psychologist (or psychiatrist?) to see how often you communicate, with whom, when. All in the hope they can draw conclusions and offer positive solutions.
Politics: Andrew Odewahn's diagrams depicting political coalitions/factions within the US Congress presents an opportunity. Perhaps by viewing these patterns you could see who's talking and predict voting outcomes. Maybe this one isn't as useful.
Business management: There's got to be so many uses here. How about determining the "super-connector" person that disseminates information. As Waber found, this person usually isn't in charge, and the informal communication tasks overwork this person. If a manager could identify this person through reality mining, perhaps some compen$ation system could be worked out, or new roles assigned, or consideration for promotion, etc. etc. etc. If I ever manage a company/dept, I'd like to know where are my communication breakdowns...Odewahn-like graphs could certainly point that out to me.
Anyways, here's a start. If anyone else has ideas for social/public/business applications for reality mining please do share them. Also, don't hammer me too hard for ignoring privacy issues...
There do some to be some great benefits that can come from Reality Mining specifically related to business such an example referenced in BusinessWeek of MIT research on call data to identify 'influencers'. These are people who make a substantial number of calls and appear to have large social networks. It is thought that these are the people a cellular provider would want to retain, since if this key person leaves they are likely to take other subscribers with them.
ReplyDeleteI will not hammer you for ignoring privacy, but I feel it has to be acknowledged that privacy is a major issue with reality mining.
One area I have not seen a control for in the studies is the potential difference in peoples behaviors when they know their whereabouts and locations are being monitored. It seems similar to monitoring how children act in front of his parents vs when they are unsupervised. There can be a significant difference.
I enjoyed reading your potential reality mining, especially in the world of education. Its use in schools could be life saving.
ReplyDeleteI never thought of social media in that context and I think it's a great point you bring up. I would love to see what experts have to say about this application (minus the privacy issues obviously).
Expanding beyond schools, it may even be a good tool for prisons, police and the FBI to use in profiling and learning more about the way criminals minds operate.
I like the idea of finding "super connectors", and I think it has applications for both business and politics. I'm not sure how to implement it practically, however. I have to wonder if the privacy intrusion might lead people to connect less.
ReplyDeleteLike Kieth, I think experimenters would need to control for the actions of the knowingly vs. clandestinely observed. Further, they would have to control for the willingly vs. unwillingly observed in order to account for the influence of self-selection bias.
A way to thread the needle on this might be to use information markets to tap the unknown talents of an organizations' members by creating a decision market, which could be viewed as a network of anonymous collaborators. See the Wikipedia article on The Wisdom of Crowds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds