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...
