Brij’s One More Idea

With the rapid technology adoption of mobile phones comes an opportunity to unobtrusively collect continuous data on human behavior [Himberg (2001), Mntyjrvi (2004)]. The very nature of mobile phones makes them an ideal vehicle to study both individuals and organizations: people habitually carry a mobile phones with them and use it as a medium through which to do much of their communication. Now that handset manufacturers are opening their platforms to developers, standard mobile phones can be harnessed as networked wearable sensors. The information available from today's phones includes the user's location (celltower ID), people nearby (repeated Bluetooth scans), communication (call and SMS logs), as well as application usage and phone status (idle, charging, etc). However, because the phones themselves are networked, their functionality transcends merely a logging device that augments social surveys. Rather phones can start being used as a means of social network intervention - supplying introductions between two proximate people who don't know each other, but probably should.