The "wisdom of crowds" -- employing the opinions of large numbers of people -- has become a tremendously popular concept used for the growing number of Web services that rely on user recommendations. The wisdom of wireless crowds, as I’m describing it, is different. In this new wireless group, “wisdom” potentially has valuable uses.
The wisdom of wireless crowds is the collection of telemetry and individual data points -- not personal opinions -- from multiple cellular phones and wireless devices in an attempt to uncover or analyze a situation, such as the location of radioactive weapons, air pollution levels, and subscriber travel habits.
It’s also different in another way: An organization could be conducting this group data mining without the miners being aware of it. It has raised privacy concerns, and the debate isn’t going to stop.
Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) and the University of California at Berkeley have been testing "participatory urbanism" that employs “networked mobile personal measurement instruments” where participating consumers are “agents of change.” A project in Accra, Ghana involved taxis and individuals with portable air pollution monitors, which incorporated GPS, to measure pollution around the city and map the levels on the Web. Cellphones weren’t used, but this is a logical next step.
Purdue University is working with Indiana to develop a system of GPS-enabled cellphones with integrated radiation sensors to detect terrorist “dirty” or nuclear bombs. Small radiation monitors already exist and could be incorporated into phones without adding much bulk, according to the press release.
College researchers tested a cellphone network that successfully detected sealed, weak radiation sources placed around the campus. Researchers are enthusiastic about wireless Internet capabilities, since data can be transmitted in real time. This illustrates the “wisdom” of wireless crowds because multiple detections would be required to determine an accurate location.
Voluntary, involuntary group monitoring
Researchers also are beginning to monitor the locations and habits of the cellular users. Several years ago, "Reality Mining" began at MIT’s Media Lab. During the 2004-2005 academic year, the movements of some 100 MIT students were monitored via Nokia phones. The project's goals included the evolution of social networks, the predictability of people’s lives, and changing group interactions. More than 350,000 hours (about 40 years) of data were collected.
The monitoring was voluntary. But what if your movements were monitored without your knowledge? A research paper in this month’s Nature used location data collected for six months from more than 100,000 cellphone users in an unnamed country (not the United States).
The researchers from Northeastern University studied travel patterns and found most people don’t travel very far from their homes. The concerns aren’t about the paper’s results but whether it was illegal for the cellular operator (also unnamed) to turn over the data. The data didn’t include names or phone numbers, just anonymous ID codes. An article in The Register reports it would be illegal in the U.S. because cellular operators can’t turn over location information without the subscriber’s prior consent. According to the article, similar requirements exist in the European Union.
This is just the start of wirelessly monitoring group behavior. For example, a few days ago Sense Networks debuted its Citysense cellular service that’s designed to employ a variety of location techniques, such as GPS, WiFi hotspots, cellular triangulation, and even GPS logs from taxis and RFID sensors.
The phone displays red “heat maps" that show where large numbers of people are congregating. Users may click on Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) or Yelp Inc. (NYSE: YELP) to determine what’s at those locations -- clubs, restaurants, etc. The software also learns user preferences and matches them to appropriate areas of activity. The company says its “Macrosense” technology is the “first platform capable of collecting and analyzing massive amounts of anonymous, aggregate location data in real-time.”
There you have it: A world where increasingly large amounts of wireless-based group data are being analyzed second-by-second by corporations, government institutions, schools, and, of course, Web companies. There’s good and bad here. But we need to be very sure about who’s sifting through our data and for what it’s being used.
The good news is we have a wealth of resources for information. A hotel certainly is one good source, but, obviously, not always. There are several great Internet resources, such as Yelp, and more on the way.
Citysense has promise. But what I'd like to know is whether large numbers of people congregating at specific restaurants, clubs, etc. means these venues are good or appropriate for me.
The future, more and more, is matching every person's preferences to databases of objective and subjective parameters to produce optimal (or very good) recommendations. I suspect this will be achievable in the near future. We already have massive databases of restaurants, movies, clubs, etc. and the social networking groups.
What we need is better software to, well, data-mine these resources in conjunction with our preferences. If Friend A almost always has the same tastes as you in music, then his/her recommendations would be given more weigh than Friend B who isn't attuned to your musical tastes but might be closer to your tastes in movies or travel destinations.
Pandora provides me with music based on its algorithms and my "yea" or "nay" determination for each new song. It doesn't take long for Pandora to produce musical channels that are extremely close to what I like in a variety of categories.
One of the downsides of "perfect" recommendations is lack of chance discoveries of things the software doesn't think we'd like. The value of chance isn't to be underestimated.
The Internet is the poster child for meandering discussions but it's also the poster child for the serendipitous discovery of interesting/useful information as a result of this meandering and hyperlinks.
Yes, there can be great power in a dedicated small group or individual. Indeed, it is how many (all?) revolutions are started. The Internet, of course, is perfect for the development of a lone voice. If data mining of cellular phones becomes prevalent, there's simply no question that it will be publicized all over the Internet (well, the technology-oriented areas of the Internet, not the "wanna-see-more-pictures-of-my-cat" Internet).
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the issue of fees to the consultant. However, the spectrum auctions were, on the one hand, a success for the government because they generated billions of dollars. On the other hand, they resulted in the same old entrenched operators capturing most of the spectrum.
The auctions also resulted in insufficient bidders for the D-block which has to be shared with public safety organizations. There is no perfect solution. Many analysts have suggested ways to, for example, establish a consortium for this block.
You're right -- my column is about group -- aggregated -- telemetry-type information gathered (voluntarily or involuntarily), not individual personal data. It is about retrieving "wisdom" from wireless aggregated data.
I'm not sure if "wisdom" should be replaced. It could be replaced, if you want, with the Facts of Wireless Crowds or the Knowledge of Wireless Crowds or the Behaviors of Wireless Crowds. That's just the start. After retrieving the telemetry-type data, other software (or humans) correlate it with other databases to reach more detailed conclusions or assumptions.
Your question about ISPs offering or allowing anti-mining software is interesting. I just suggested this type of software as a possibility. There are a variety of "anti" programs (virus, trojans, etc.). I haven't heard of an anti-mining program. I wonder if one exists. If not, I wonder if such a program will be created for cellular phones. Interesting to speculate, eh?
For some services we would need some objective data probably obtained from sensors (say temperature or pollution) but for others the wisdom of crowds is all we've got.
I went to San Francisco this month and I was looking for some places to go for a drink at night. I asked in the hotel and the pointed me to a place, but it's not what I was looking for and never could find a place I wanted. If I had known of CitySense - which oddly enough has San Francisco in their demo - I would had been able to see where most people are going, and I guess it would be fairly easy to filter it to my age group (the possibilities are endless)
You are right because i've benefitted so much from that discuss. I was just trying to highlight the perceive ambiguity in the title of the Post. Other than that, i think your discussion had benefitted the entire readership. I don't know if you can get a thinkernetter post base on that discussion. It would be really interesting!!
There is in this thread a mixing up the words 'wisdom' and 'information' and 'data points' but I sense that in discussions like these we are seeing the Internet evolve before our very eyes. Probably there is a word not invented yet which better captures what we are talking about, but that makes it all the more fun to engage in these debates. Certainly there is no reason to confine discussion within one narrow box. Sometimes as the discussion goes on it drifts into areas even more interesting and important than the original essay. It's all good!
A small cabal is always there to countermand them over "hanging chad..." or some such technicality.
Hey, since you are a wireless guru could you comment on that fiasco of a bandwidth spectrum auction that took place earlier this year or late last year as well as the story about the consultant they had appointed as 'overseer' and the quote unqoute "FEEs" that were going to be tributed to that consultant the bidders balked at...
Your discuss with Kim and others have skewed the intent of your Post or may be you have to re-phrase the title of your post to incorporate that discussion. I initially noticed that the word 'wisdom' will be mis-interpreted in this context to mean a 'collective decision' by cellphone users. So Kim and others have angled the discussion to include 'personal ' leadership as oppose to 'crowds'. I think what you basically want to drive on your post is that there is so much wealth of data from wireless crowds which can be harness by a variety of authorities in a variety of ways.
So may be to avoid the ambiguity, the word wisdomshould have been replaced. But i think you did a great job in the opening paragraph to emphasize the "wisdom" you are referring to rather than the more popular 'wisdom of the crowds'.
With regards to the anti-mining software, do you think ISPs will allow them to be installed or even to accept their use?
As I wrote to Joe Earhart, I am
certainly not a rah-rah cheerleader for everything about the wisdom
of crowds. The fact that millions of people watch reality TV should
dispel all notions about the omniscience of the great unwashed.
Group-think is often dolt-think, and the true geniuses often go against
conventional wisdom, as highlighted in that absolutely brilliant and moving Apple commercial for "think different."
However,
wisdom comes from a variety of sources -- groups and individuals.
Indeed, one of the great challenges of the Internet is for people to
discern what are truth and lies.
Some of what you and Nikki are
suggesting is in the nascent stages. As I wrote, Citysense is,
literally, displaying blobs of red colors on phone screens to indicate
the largest concentrations of people.
There is at least one
solution to the problem of people turning off their phones to "cheat"
about the number of people at a location: Fixed and portable cameras.
With the prevalence of cameras (ask any Londoner.....or me living in
the Washington, D.C. area!), it's "a simple matter of programing" to
offer cellular phone applications that tap into cameras at bars, clubs,
etc. Sure, there are security concerns. But they are mere bagatelles
compared to the value of being able to see whether a dance club is busy.
I
think we'll also see more wireless applications offered by
amusement parks, such as being able to check wait times for
attractions or no-reservation restaurants. I'm actually researching that now for a possible
"Thinkernet" article; still in the very early stages of the research.
We
can already view all sorts of cameras via the wired
Internet and are beginning to see the development of wirelessly viewing
cameras, especially traffic cameras -- across the street or across the
oceans. Of course, when the cellular camera bots are unleashed, we
will be able to surreptitiously view surroundings via other people's
camera phones. But I'm forbidden to talk about that.
No, I don't
think you are dreaming. We don't need to take the blue pill to realize
these speculations are completely do-able. With the development of
increasingly sophisticated camera phones, location technologies,
real-time monitoring software, etc., it's probably a matter of "when,"
not "if."
As for Schrodinger's Cat, well, it's only a cat. If it were a dog, then it would be important.
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